Who doesn’t immediately have the "Dance of the Four Little Swans" in their mind’s eye when they think of the subject of ballet? Or the touching pas de deux of the swan princess Odette and her prince Siegfried? Hardly any other work has had such a strong influence on ballet history up to the present day as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s "Swan Lake". Yet the reaction to the premiere at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater in 1877 was rather muted: the music too symphonic, but above all the choreography rather bland. The triumphant success of "Swan Lake" did not begin until 1895, when the choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov revised the ballet and staged it at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg - Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) had already died.The choreography around the innocent white swan princess Odette, her seductive counterpart Odile in the form of the black swan and Siegfried searching for his great love is still considered the basis for all productions today.

When Giacomo Puccini read Henri Murger’s work Les scènes de la vie de bohème in 1893, he was immediately taken with the freshness, youth, passion, cheerfulness and love with all its joys and sufferings. Puccini (1858-1924) immediately recognized the ideal material for an opera. The libretto was written by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who had already worked successfully with the composer for Manon Lescaut.Puccini worked out the depth of the characters in detail in his Bohème: Important moments were meticulously composed and text and music form an incomparable unity. Puccini completely attuned the themes to the action, in which lyrical-sentimental parts contrast excellently with humorous, lively parts. Since he was a genius at writing precisely for the human voice, his operas, above all "La Bohème", were a great success because of their incomparably beautiful melodies. Famous arias like "Che gelida manina" or "Sì. Mi chiamano Mimì" can also be found on opera samplers due to the intensity of the transported feelings or are a fixed component of concert evenings.The stage-effective piece, first performed in Turin in 1896, with its impressionistic features around the poet Rodolfo and his beloved Mimì, who cannot escape poverty and misery in their Parisian attic, still brings tears of emotion to the eyes of the audience today. Puccini’s masterpiece is certainly one of the most original and magical operas ever written.