LA BOHEME.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12518, 21 May 1910, Page 3

LA BOHEME.

We are to hayo the opera "La Poheme" here during the forthcoming j 'visit of Mr "Williamson's Grand Opera Company. It is a very fine and api pealing opera indeed; but to me the idea of hearing the opera sung in EngHsh by people, some of whom do not know "except as a parrot knows | it, seems rather ghastly and absurd. I The opera is founded, of course, on Murger's famous romance. 1 remember that romance well, because the first ! leading of it formed a great event of jmy boyhood. I was thrilled, entranced, enthralled. I laughed and I wept, and generally I had no end of a time. The ; characters were all wonderfully alive to \ me. I lived and loved and schemed ' with every one of them. I was ridiculously .Bohemian a .nd romantic, fit for •anything. But now, alas! the bloom lias worn off. I find Murger's sugariness indigestibles, and his obviously forced situations bore me. Ah me! if youth but knew, if age but could! Still, .Murger's was'true Bohemia, as far as it went. A little stagey at times, of [ course, and at times a little thread- ! bare, but Bohemia unmistakeable, just the same. We have no Bohemia now; at least not in New Zealand. Men guzzle in bars, and bawl at each other in clubs labelled ISavage. Bu,t that isn't it Tho false Bohemia is a very baleful region, and its foetid miasmas have poisoned many bright spirits It is a plao-3 in which indulgence always passes for enjoyment. The woman in it take rleasure in pretending the vices of men and , affecting tho manners of drabs. The men are- poor creatures, 'whose chief concern in that half-life is to shuffle off their true responsibilities. There is violent talk 'of friendship in the false. Bohemia, but every creature there is in some sort the parasite of all the others. Life has no deep meaning for hhem; their ideas are mere simulacra fashioned of wind and words. 1 have seen a good deal of this false Bohemia, for I have had bad mad moments enough like the rest: and I

want to see no more. There are no flowered swards or wimpling waters in it: nothing but unkempt wildernesses ond • barren lands The vices of the false Bohemia are soul-destroying, its chastity at the best ia prude's pretence. There is neither sense nor reason within its borders. It is fully time the sane world cleared and disinfected it.