Thanksgiving is over. Now Christmas.

When I think Christmas, I think Puccini.

Not his Messa di Gloria, which is underrated, but La Boheme.

Rodolpho and Mimi meet and fall in love on Christmas Eve.

Spoiler alert, she dies.

The music may not feel like Christmas but it is glorious.

The dramatic aspects of the opening scene of the show can get lost if we anticipate the two big arias and the duet that follow.

In that first scene we meet Marcello, a young painter, and Rodolpho, a young writer.

They're trying to work but are freezing their butts off. Marcello wants to burn his painting but Rodolpho thinks the paint will stink so offers up his drama instead.

In our paperless age it is easy to overlook the significance of what Rodolpho is doing. He has hand written a drama on paper he could scarcely afford and decides to burn it up almost on a whim.

There is no saved copy.

At one point he says, "in those blue flames, goes up in smoke a scene of romance." This is Puccini foreshadowing Rodolpho's romance with Mimi and her blue eyes.

With Mimi, Rodolpho throws the relationship into the flames whenever he feels jealous.

After everyone decides to go out on the town for Christmas Eve, Act I ends with two famous arias and the "O soave fanciulla" duet.

This duet is a turning point for Puccini. The first act duet in Tosca is a further development of the Boheme duet and Butterfly even more so.

All three duets have that magical, sexy, moment when the soprano and tenor are in unison with the entire orchestra.

So maybe Christmas isn't about passionate opera duets but it's not really about sleeping in the parking lot of a shopping center either.

Given a choice, I take the opera.

Two of my favorite singers in the Boheme duet: Franco Corelli and Mirella Freni.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnnrDkY25tU