Paris under Louis-Philippe literature by Henri Murger in a series of stories called "Scènes de la vie de Bohème" (Scenes of Bohemian Life) published in Paris between 1845 and 1849, which in 1896 was made into the opera "La Bohème" by Puccini. The term spread from Paris to the rest of Europe, and came to be used for anyone who lived an artistic and unconventional life. Prostitution was common in Paris. Beginning in 1816, prostitutes were required to register with the police. Between 1816 and 1842, their numbers grew from 22,000 to 43,000. They were mostly young women from the French provinces who
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical) Puccini charged in a lawsuit that a recurring two-bar passage in "Music of the Night" closely resembled a similar phrase first heard in the aria "Quello che tacete" from Puccini's opera "Girl of the Golden West". The litigation was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. In 1990 a Baltimore songwriter named Ray Repp filed a lawsuit alleging that the title song from "Phantom" was based on a song that he wrote in 1978 called "Till You". After eight years of litigation – including an unsuccessful countersuit by Lloyd Webber claiming that "Till You" was itself a plagiarism of