Seven leading singers and directors named La bohème as one of Puccini’s best operas.Prepare yourself to become an aficionado of the Aria. It’s a tragic story of young love, friendship, mortality and heartbreak. We discover that Mimì is gravely ill and Rodolfo is unable to support her. The plot follows four bohemians living in Paris, whose worlds are turned upside down when Mimì knocks on their door and quickly falls in love with Rodolfo. Just as we’ve all been worried about the cost-of-living crisis, the characters of La bohème were too.

Puccini’s 1896 opera is such a timeless classic that Jonathan Larson used it as the basis for his 1996 musical. If you’ve seen the iconic movie Rent, you’ll find the plot of La bohéme eerily familiar. If you’re already a fan, here are our choices of what to listen to if you like Bizet’s Carmen. We included Carmen in our round-up of the best Bizet works. In recent years, choreographer Matthew Bourne has created The Car Man, a ballet based on Bizet’s opera but with an entirely new plot, instead set in a garage in a small Italian American community in a midwestern town in the US. She has become one of opera’s most iconic characters. The romance shifts to tragedy as Don Jośe pursues her in a fit of jealousy, stabbing her at the amphitheatre where Escamillo is about to perform.

Shortly after, however, she grows tired of him and instead pursues the bullfighter Escamillo. Don José falls instantly in love with her and ends up running away from the army to be with her. Carmen is a brilliantly bold heroine: smoking, drinking and seducing her way around town. The opera itself is packed full of brilliantly catchy melodies and hummable tunes – and that’s before you even consider its dramatic plotlines. The ‘Habanera’ and the ‘Toreador Song’ from Bizet’s Carmen have both enjoyed success beyond the walls of the opera house, so will probably be familiar to you already.

We named the best recordings of Mozart’s The Magic Flute here. We included The Magic Flute in our round-up of the best Mozart operas.

Best opera music