Cafe Momus, setting of Act 3.

Note: Paul Varian, a former CNN writer, editor and senior executive producer, accompanied Global Atlanta Publisher Phil Bolton on a recent trip to Prague organized by George Novak, honorary Czech consul general in Atlanta. This is one in a series of stories from the trip.  Mr. Varian’s account follows:

I traveled nearly 5,000 miles for my introduction to something I had given a lifetime cold shoulder. Now, after an emotionally absorbing night at the opera in Prague, I can only stand up and shout, “Bravo!”

This child of the 60s weaned on rock ‘n roll, the blues, Motown and Bob Dylan was regaled by a musically and dramatically riveting performance of Puccini’s “La Boheme” at the spacious and elegant Prague State Opera, considered one of the most beautiful theaters in Europe.

Set in Paris at the turn of the century before last, it’s a love story about a penniless poet living a contented bohemian existence with his artist friends and his next-door neighbor, a fragile young seamstress who captivates him with “a pair of lovely eyes” the moment they meet.

“What a cold little hand,” the tenor sings to the soprano as they search his darkened, ramshackle apartment for a key she has dropped and pretends to have lost and that he has secretly pocketed. “Let me warm it here in mine.”

The oh-so poetic lyrics are Italian, but there are Czech and English subtitles. As any opera buff knows, the performers do not use microphones — their voices powerful enough to fill the theater.

Rodolfo and Mimi tell each other their life stories, quickly fall in love and spend an evening with his friends at a lively Latin Quarter cafe. As their relationship deepens, Rodolfo becomes blinded by jealousy, they quarrel and separate, she becomes ill, and dies.

But Puccini‘s extraordinarily memorable music lives on. “La Boheme,” which made its Prague debut at the historic National Theater in 1898 to negative reviews, is the world’s most performed opera to this day, according to San Francisco opera aficionado Bruce Hoard.

“I’ve seen it many, many times, including twice in one week this past season,” he said. “It’s an opera I truly enjoy. It just works.”

The Atlanta Opera plans to stage “La Boheme” this fall. It’s also scheduled yet again for the San Francisco Opera‘s coming season.

Opera’s appeal, Mr. Hoard said, is that it’s timeless and engages you viscerally.

“If you’re at all open to music, opera should really grab you … and throw you around the room,” he said. “It’s more than just music. It is drama.”

Opera has a storied history in Prague, dating back to the 1797 world premier of Mozart‘s “Don Giovanni,” considered his masterpiece, and before that the highly successful Prague production of “The Marriage of Figaro.” The Austrian pianist-composer is venerated in Prague. The city even has a Mozart Museum.

But many opera lovers consider Puccini’s work, derived from the Henri Murger novel “La vie de boheme (Scenes of the Bohemian Life), to be “the opera’s opera.”

“I just love ‘La Boheme,’ says Slovakian conductor Ondrej Lenard. “I witnessed (famed Austrian conductor) Carlos Kleiber being moved to tears while conducting

‘La Boheme,’ so personal was his experience of the music. You may be unhappy, you may be depressed, and yet thanks to this music, you will be transported into another world.”

I’m apt to shed a tear watching anything from a silly movie to a Broadway musical. I had to wring out my handkerchief before “La Boheme” was over and I wasn’t alone, even in our small group winding up a nearly weeklong visit to Prague sponsored by the Czech Tourism Ministry.

We met the lead performers backstage after the final curtain.

“We’re glad to see that you’re actually still alive,” Phil Bolton, publisher of Global Atlanta, told Maria Kobielska, the soprano who played Mimi.

And so too is a musical art form that has been playing to packed houses for centuries.