"O Mimì, tu più non torni "
O Mimì, you won't come back again
RODOLFO
O Mimi, you won't come back again.
O happy days,
tiny hands, sweet-scented tresses,
… snow-white neck!
Oh Mimi, my short-lived youth!
And you, little bonnet,
which she hid under the pillow when she left,
you know all our happiness.
Feel my heart, my broken heart,
for love has died.
MARCELLO
I don't know how it is
that my brush goes on painting
laying down colours against my will.
If I want to paint,
be it sky or land, winter or spring,
it traces instead two dark eyes
and a luscious mouth.
And Musetta's face emerges,
it's Musetta's face – full of charm and deceit.
And all this time, Musetta's enjoying life
and my faint heart calls out to her,
my faint heart waits for her!
Puccini's La Bohème (The Bohemians) is set in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1840s – Rodolfo is a poet, who lives with his artist friends including the painter, Marcello. They live hand to mouth, striving to make ends meet. Rodolfo has fallen in love a neighbour, Mimi, a quiet girl who works as an embroiderer, while Marcello has an on again, off again relationship with Musetta.
By the opera’s end, both Rodolfo and Marcello are separated from their lovers but their thoughts still dwell on Mimi and Musetta and the love they have lost.