La Bohème: the melodies linger on

What is the secret of La Bohème's enduring appeal?

Rehearsing La Bohème for the Abu Dhabi Festival.

Why is La Bohème so popular? If you're not sure of the answer, the performances at the Emirates Palace tonight and tomorrow will give first-time sceptics a chance to find out why its lush romanticism and catchy tunes still pack such a punch. Mind you, the reason for La Bohème's status as the best-loved opera of them all is actually a no-brainer: it's the tunes, stupid. Gliding seamlessly from hit to hit, Puccini's score is packed with sumptuous, delightful melodies that give singers a chance to shine and breathe real warmth and feeling into the opera's familiar plot.

In Italy, arias such as Che gelida manina ("Your tiny hand is frozen") and Mi chiamano Mimi ("They call me Mimi") are as well-loved as show tunes are in America or Andrew Lloyd Webber in Britain - and for good reason. Add this beautiful, varied music to a plot whose characters inhabit a world that modern audiences still recognise (more than can be said for Wagner) and it's no wonder the public's love of La Bohème has never slackened in the 114 years since its premiere.

The storyline is simple, but it has a mythic, romantic quality that still resonates. A rose-tinted portrait of the gritty charms of urban slumming, it follows the fortunes of a group of bohemians starving photogenically in early 19th-century Paris. It was based on the work of the bohemian writer Henry Murger, who himself spent much of his life struggling to make a living with his pen in Paris's Latin Quarter.

Living a happy but hand-to-mouth life in a rundown garret, the opera's hero - the poet Rodolfo - meets his neighbour, the seamstress Mimi, when she comes to borrow a light for her candle one night. They fall in love, but when Rodolfo realises that Mimi is ill with tuberculosis, he cuts her off, hoping that she will find a wealthier suitor who can look after her properly. The couple separate, and months pass before Mimi, worn down and abandoned by the wealthy lover she has found, finally returns to Rodolfo to reminisce about happier times - and die in his arms.

This classic plot, it must be admitted, is not without the occasional cliché. The starving poet Rodolfo's claim that he is "poor but happy" now seems a little pat, while even Mimi's poignant death from tuberculosis is already a familiar device from Verdi's earlier Italian opera hit, La Traviata. Matched with music of rich, shimmering beauty, however, this is easy to overlook. Ecstatic and tender at the same time, the love songs at the opera's heart have a sincerity and freshness that makes watching the lovers' speedy courtship and subsequent wistful nostalgia a real heart-tugging, tissue soaker.

It's not just a pretty period piece, either. La Bohème's struggling but creative gaggle of characters might be set against the backdrop of 1830s Paris, but they are cultural archetypes whose modern day descendants are easily placed. Any major city still has its share of would-be writers, artists and musicians trying to make names for themselves with no money. Likewise, they often live in gritty areas cheek by jowl with people like Mimi, members of the urban underclass just struggling to get by.

The continuing relevance of these characters keeps La Bohème fresh - and very responsive to imaginative updating. The Australian film director Baz Luhrmann's Broadway version of the opera set it successfully in the 1950s, while a recent London production staged in a pub theatre gave it an appropriately raw authenticity by portraying the cast as contemporary migrants. Both of those approaches scored well with audiences, but by far the best-known update is the musical Rent, which took the plot's bare bones and transcribed them to Manhattan's Lower East Side in the Aids-stricken early 1990s.

La Bohème's portrait of these lives is of course rose-tinted. Rodolfo and his friends might be reduced to burning their own manuscripts to keep warm, but they seize every moment they can for pleasure, frittering away money with easy insouciance. But the opera does not always romanticise poverty. Moments such as Mimi's pitiful wonder when she is bought a muff to warm her hands suggest a world of real want behind the froth of the libretto. This mute world of pain and fragile happiness rippling under the piece's graceful surface makes La Bohème that rarest of beasts - a mainstream romance with depth.