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
Jacopo Puccini Jacopo Puccini Jacopo (Giacomo) Puccini (; 26 January 1712 16 May 1781) was an 18th-century Italian composer who lived and worked primarily in Lucca, Tuscany. He was the first of five generations of composers, the most famous of whom was his great-great-grandson, the opera composer Giacomo Puccini. Puccini studied in Bologna under Giuseppe Carretti, who was "maestro di cappella" at Bologna's San Petronio Basilica. In Bologna Puccini became friends with Padre Martini. After returning to Lucca in 1739, he served as organist in the cathedral and later Maestro di Cappella to the Most Serene Republic. Puccini belonged to the Accademia