Four Parisian artist friends share modest accommodation and live between romantic bohemian clichés and abject poverty. All four harbour hopes of a career breakthrough and have no thought of letting harsh realities get them down. After the exuberant foursome deviously manage to avoid their landlord and three of them are already on their way to their favourite café, writer Rodolfo receives a visit from beautiful neighbour Mimì. Rodolfo and Mimì instantly fall in love and plunge into a passionate amour fou that will not have a happy ending.

"Great sorrow in little souls" is what Giacomo Puccini called his formula, which manages to move audiences to tears time and again. Opera-lovers all over the world are touched time and again by this tragic love story. Puccini's music enchants with both the light-hearted sketches of the artists' lives and the wistful sounds between the lovers. And above it all hangs youth's longing for a happy future.