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 Awards Paris Opera Awards The Paris Opera Awards (POA) is an international contest for opera singers held in Paris, France. It is held under the patronage of the French representation at the European Commission. The first edition of POA was launched in March 2012. It allowed seventy-eight opera singers from South Africa, Albania, Germany, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Uruguay to participate. The fifty best results were reviewed by the panel of judges. The ten finalists (five