In this scene, which is full of life and movement--showing in the treatment of the chorus, formed of children, people, soldiers, students, work girls, and gendarmes, that beautifully polished technique in melodic construction which makes Puccini so strong and in every way a master musician--the lively Musetta comes on the scene. Once more may Murger's own words fittingly recall her to mind. "Mademoiselle Musetta was a pretty girl of twenty, very coquettish, rather ambitious, but without any pretensions to spelling. Oh, those delightful suppers ... a perpetual alternative between a blue brougham and an omnibus: between the Rue Breda and the Latin quarter."
Although the incidents represented appear to follow consecutively, it is a little strange to find a sort of _al fresco_ entertainment in progress after the references to the bitter cold in the preceding Act. At any rate, whether the dramatist's license be allowed or not--and we may easily imagine a flight of time to have taken place since the happenings in the opening Act--the café Momus, in this second Act, is so full that our quartet of Bohemians, with Musetta and her elderly admirer, take their supper _en plein air_. There is little of incident, or progress of events, in this lively scene. Musetta is reconciled after singing her delicious song, in slow waltz form, to her Marcello, and the fatuous old Alcindoro is left to pay the bill of the whole party. Yet against this, the sense of movement and gaiety, shown by the ever-moving crowd, and the incident of the toy-seller Parpignol--just a plain slice of life put down on the stage in a truly modern method--is beautifully worked out in the music, and never for an instant does it flag in vivacity.
Musetta comes into prominence again in the third Act. Again is the weather intensely cold, and the chill drear atmosphere is indicated in the music at the opening by the subtle passage of bare fifths, which is further remarkable as a purely musical effect from its connection with the trumpet passage which heralded the second Act. The scene is a place beyond the toll-gate, on the Orleans road, at the end of the Rue d'Enfer. Over a tavern hangs Marcello's picture as a signboard, with its title altered to the Port of Marseilles, signifying its adaptation to its environment.