The opera that Max Jacob and Young Pablo Picasso are attending, is a performance of Puccini's "La bohème". The scene shows an excerpt from the opera's finale, where Mimì is dying in the arms of her lover Rodolfo. "La bohème" tells a tale of young bohemians living in Paris in the 1840s. This mirrors the lives of Max Jacob and Picasso at that point, especially since the opera's lead characters are the poet Rodolfo and the painter Marcello, who are also roommates (just like Jacob and Picasso).