"(...) it is legitimate to see, in La Bohème, the compositor's nostalgia in relation to his own youth. Maybe it isn't misplaced understand as a personal tribute of Puccini to the times the theme that is heard just in the beginning of the opera (which works as a kind of leitmotiv of the four friends): it is derivative of an orchestral score of the composer, the 'Capriccio Sinfonico,' from 1883 -- time that he, as a student of the Milan Conservatory, shared room with [Pietro] Mascagni." (Perpetuo)
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