Giacomo Puccini were Puccini's contemporaries, drew express parallels between these incidents and particular events in the opera. Checchi cited a diary kept by Puccini while he was still a student, which recorded an occasion in which, as in Act 4 of the opera, a single herring served as a dinner for four people. Puccini himself commented: "I lived that "Bohème", when there wasn't yet any thought stirring in my brain of seeking the theme of an opera". ("") Puccini's composition of "La bohème" was the subject of a public dispute between Puccini and fellow composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo. In early 1893, the two
Paris Opera Ballet press as "the lost generation" of dancers working up the ranks who have become soloist (Sujet) but have been unlucky for years as far as climbing up the last step of the career ladder is concerned. The Paris Opera Ballet School has churned out some of the most famous dancers of all time, such as Sylvie Guillem and Laurent Hilaire. Yet Sylvie Guillem, being principal dancer since 1984, left the company in 1989 at the age of 24 because she wanted more freedom, the right to perform with other companies, an arrangement the management of the Paris Opera Ballet declined.