This file comprises:-
Recording Data - including Casts Lists
Introduction (background discussion about La
Bohème)
The Recordings (Background information about
the recordings)
The Reviews (against each ACT's scenario)
Conclusions
| The 1956 EMI Sir Thomas Beecham Recording
[Mono ADD] EMI CDS5 56236 2; 2 CDs [107:18] |
 |
Save around 22% with
Crotchet
Amazon
UK
Amazon
US
|
Rodolfo………………………………………….Jussi
Björling
Mimi…………………………………………….Victoria
de los Angeles
Marcello…………………………………………Robert
Merrill
Musetta…………………………………………..Lucine
Amara
Schaunard………………………………………..John
Reardon
Colline…………………………………………
..Giorgio Tozzi
R.C.A. Victor Orchestra and Chorus/The Columbus Boychoir
Rodolfo…………………………………………..Luciano
Pavarotti
Mimi……………………………………………
Mirella Freni
Marcello…………………………………………Rolando
Panerai
Musetta…………………………………………..Elizabeth
Harwood
Schaunard………………………………………..Gianni
Maffeo
Colline……………………………………………Nicolai
Ghiaurov
Schöneberge Sängerknaben Chor der Deutschen Oper
Berlin/BerlinerPhilharmonica
See also review of DVD
Rodolfo…………………………………………..Roberto
Alagna
Mimi……………………………………………
Leontina Vaduva
Marcello…………………………………………Thomas
Hampson
Musetta…………………………………………
Ruth Ann Swenson
Schaunard………………………………………..Simon
Keenlyside
Colline…………………………………………
Samuel Ramey
Philharmonia Orchestra/London Voices
| The 1999 Decca Recording of Riccardo Chailly
(first studio recording of the new critical edition; edited from original
sources by Francesco Degrada)
DECCA 466 070-2 2CDs [99:49] |
|
Save around 22% with
Crotchet
Amazon
UK
Amazon
US |
Rodolfo………………………………………….Roberto
Alagna
Mimi…………………………………………….Angela
Gheorghiu
Marcello…………………………………………Simon
Keenlyside
Musetta………………………………………….
Elisabetta Scano
Schaunard………………………………………..Roberto
de Candia
Colline…………………………………………
Ildebrando D'Arcangelo
Coro di voci bianche del Teatro alla Scala e del Conservatorio "G. Verdi"di
Milano Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano
Plus:-
| The Naxos super budget recording
Naxos 8.660003-04 |
|
Save around 22% with
Amazon
UK
Amazon
US |
Luba Orgonasova, Jonathan Welch, Carmen Gonzales, Fabio Previati, Boaz Senator,
Ivan Urbas, Richard Novák, Jirí Sulzenko, Ladislav Hallon,
Stanislav Benacka ,Bratislava Children's Choir / Slovak Philharmonic Chorus
/ Bratislava Radio Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Will Humburg
Introduction
Many music lovers will, I believe, admit that they learned to love opera
by listening to Puccini. Some of us might move away from him, even scorn
him. Then with luck, we come back, listen with fresh ears and appreciate
his strengths all the more - and we grow to love him all over again.
A recent biographer of Puccini astutely remarked: "The ability to write a
good tune may be no guarantee of greatness. But the ability to write a good
tune and then to place it seemingly effortlessly in the context of a work
that is beautifully crafted, unerringly paced and precisely coloured is a
token of genius that should never be underestimated."
A distinguished critic once observed that opera houses need Puccini the way
farms need dung. The quip was less insulting than it sounded for without
La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly as a permanent
part of their repertoire, most opera companies would be in penury. These
works are the fertilisers that enable the music of composers, less popular
than Puccini, to survive today's financial rigours.
La Bohème, composed between 1893 and 1895, was the first of
this trio of Puccini's popular, middle-period operas. It followed on from
the composer's Manon Lescaut (1889-92) and marks a significant advance
in Puccini's development. As Conrad Wilson comments in his Puccini biography
(Phaidon
20th Century Composers series), "The gusto, the perfection
of detail, the instinctive grasp of timing, and the utter assurance of
La Bohème are enough to make Manon Lescaut, for
all its qualities, seem in comparison somewhat stiff and heavy… Wagnerian
longeurs are conspicuously absent. Indeed, La Bohème
is a work so racy that it must be one of the few operas ever written that
lasts not so very much longer in performance than in the spoken reading of
its libretto." The insistence of some opera houses (anxious to promote their
catering) on three intervals between each of Bohème's four
acts can make the opera seem long though; and its cohesion and sense of balance
is thus jeopardised. (Once, Deutsche Oper, Berlin staged it in a single act
giving a very different impression of the work's running time!)
Before Puccini set to work on La Bohème, there was a violent
ending of his friendship with his fellow composer Ruggero Leoncavallo who
had been planning to write a version of La Bohème himself.
(Leoncavallo actually did complete his opera but it is totally overshadowed
by the Puccini composition, which was completed first).
La Bohème is based on Henri Murger's Parisian Scènes
de la vie de bohème in which the character of Rodolfo is very
different. Murger's original was described as being bald and charmless with
holes in his sleeves and a huge bushy many-coloured beard. Puccini merely
extracted what he needed, transformed Murger's characters to suit his own
ends and, in so doing, made Mimi the central character (another of Puccini's
doomed heroines) not the vain and feckless Rodolfo. "Puccini's ability to
identify with his heroines was a major feature - if not the major feature
- of all his operas… It also, in La Bohème, inspired him
to produce the most perfectly structured of all his operas, the one in which
choice of subject, choice of librettists, and the musical approach all merged
to create a masterpiece.
The five librettists of Manon Lescaut were reduced to the two who mattered
for La Bohème - Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Illica
was to write the scenario and Giacosa was to versify it but they both had
to contend with Puccini's volatile temperament and his continual interference
and constant text and structural changes. Giacosa protested that one scene
had had to be rewritten a hundred times and threatened to resign. A whole
act was sacrificed because Puccini thought, quite rightly, that it added
nothing significant to, and even lessened the impact of the drama and interrupted
its flow. And so La Bohème took three years to complete, "compared
with the three weeks a Mozart might have needed for it".
La Bohème is perfectly balanced; Acts I and II mirror-image
Acts III and IV.
Act I begins with Rodolfo and Marcello bantering in their studio before Schaunard
and Colline arrive and concludes with the beginnings of the love affair between
Mimi and Rodolfo. Act IV opens with the same two artists in the same studio
before the entrance of Colline and Schaunard (again bringing in food) and
concludes with the end of Mimi and Rodolfo's love as the poor girl dies.
Act II begins with the crowds in front of the Café Momus and concentrates
on Mimi's growing passion for Rodolfo (but hints at the latter's jealous
disposition) and introduces Musetta who appears with her wealthy old protector
and successfully provokes Marcello's jealousy so that he takes her back.
Act III also begins outside (in front of one of the gates to Paris and near
the inn where Marcello is painting) with a busy-ish crowd scene. It covers
the rift in the relationship between Mimi and Rodolfo and a parallel rift
between Marcello and Musetta. Even little details are mirrored. In Act I
Schaunard explains that his "windfall" comes from a wealthy Englishman who
had wanted a musician to play to his dying parrot. In Act IV when the artists
are indulging in horse-play, Rodolfo asks of Marcello, "Which do you choose,
Baron, salmon or trout?" to which, Marcello replies, "Well, Duke, how about
some parrot-tongue?"
As Wilson says, " The four young men and two women, around whom the plot
revolves, seem the very stuff of nineteenth century bohemian life. Rodolfo
and Mimi fall in and out of love, as do Marcello and Musetta, while Colline
and Schaunard, without amorous entanglements, are content to assist in this
little comedy of life. In the end Mimi dies. The others grieve. But Rodolfo,
who finally is too self-absorbed to notice the actual moment of Mimi's death
will soon find somebody else - or so his noisy ostentatious despair seems
to imply as the curtain falls. The four men - poet, painter, philosopher,
musician - are deftly differentiated. Mimi's sweetness finds its opposite
in Musetta's brashness. [Yet notice how Puccini broadens out Musetta's character
in Act IV when she is the first to offer to fetch help when Mimi lies dying
and offers Mimi the warmth of her muff and even tells Mimi it was Rodolfo
who had bought it for her]
"Each scene, whether private or public, is a Parisian tableau precisely evoked
by Puccini's music and by the conspicuous development, in this work, of his
ability to express dramatic emotion in terms of memorable melody, and to
respond instantaneously to every change of mood or situation. As one commentator
put it: 'When he composed, he knew exactly what he wanted; there was in him
an inexorable cine-chronometer that followed all the action down to the smallest
detail.'
…In Bohème the music is the action, and the action
is the music, in a manner new to opera. That is what makes the vividly exact
musical depiction of every incident in Act II unique in operatic history.
Here is music in which time is not frozen in the manner it usually
has to be in opera. Even the orchestral part, like the singing, is made to
sound conversational in a fresh way, without sacrificing the beauty of either
instrumental or vocal tone. Nobody - except Puccini himself at one point
in Act III of Manon Lescaut - had done anything quite like it before
in Italian opera, and nobody would do it so successfully again."
Puccini's graphic music and brilliant orchestration for Bohème
is noticeable throughout the opera. I would mention just one example - right
at the beginning of the opera when Rodolfo and Marcello are shivering in
their studio - you can feel the chill in the air with them; and when Rodolfo
burns his manuscript you can hear the fire take hold, flare and crackle,
and ultimately die down and extinguish.
In conclusion of this section, I would quote Wilson once again as he reminds
us: "…Nowhere else did Puccini give one of his operas such a recognisably
and consistently symphonic shape. Leonard Bernstein had good reason to select
Act III of La Bohème as his favourite example of 'what music
does to expand mere drama into opera'. Using it as the basis of a television
lecture, he showed how successfully Puccini expanded the emotion of the words,
how the change of one single note in a repeated phrase could heighten the
drama, and how two, three or four characters singing simultaneously could
create a network of emotions that was in itself a new kind of emotional
experience - and one of a sort that only great opera can achieve.
Background Notes on the Beecham and Chailly
Recordings
The classic Beecham recording of La Bohème was something of
a miracle. It was organised at the very last minute when Beecham's manager,
Andrew Schulhof, realised that Victoria de los Angeles, Jussi Björling
and Beecham himself would all be in New York in the spring of 1956 and persuaded
EMI and its then-associate American company RCA to record the opera. Edward
Greenfield, in writing the notes for this set recalled, "The sessions began
on March 16 and 17 and were completed in an intensive rush of activity between
March 30 and April 6 with only one day (April 4) left free of sessions. Legend
has it that Victoria de los Angeles stopped off on her way to the airport,
to make her final contribution to a recording that tingles with life and
warmth from beginning to end."
Greenfield goes on to remind us that Beecham had met Puccini and had had
first hand experience of the volatile composer's interference in the production
of his own operas.
Beecham never liked Puccini too well. Puccini had brushed Beecham aside when
in 1904 the young conductor first met him after an approach through Illica,
to discuss Beecham's own opera on the subject of Christopher Marlow. Then,
in 1920, when Beecham was established, he clashed again with Puccini over
the set for a Covent Garden performance of Suor Angelica.
Beecham recalled that in many places in La Bohème, the performing
directions were not explicit enough or contradictory. As Beecham himself
commented in the context of this recording, 'In almost every instance, Puccini
confirmed my impression, gathered through many performances of
Bohème, that something was lacking in one respect here, or
incomplete there. So what I have undertaken to do in this recording represents
as Puccini indicated in my score - his views of his earlier work not many
years before he died.'
Greenfield adds, "What Beecham did not mention there - though one has to
assume that it equally reflects his discussions with the composer - is that
his speeds are almost always markedly slower than those of Toscanini, who
at that time, was by far the greatest Italian conductor of the day and the
conductor of Bohème at its Turin premiere in 1896, tended to
be counted authoritative in his views. Over the years, since Beecham made
this recording, not long after Toscanini had made his at a live concert
performance, also in New York, the views of Beecham on tempi in this opera
are the ones that have tended to prevail and understandably so. The music
itself blossoms the more.
We pass now from the oldest recording in this survey to the most recent -
that of Riccardo Chailly who uses the new critical edition of La
Bohème produced by Francesco Degrada in 1988. In a fascinating
interview with the conductor, reproduced in the set's booklet, Chailly reveals
that Degrada's edition contains no less than 181 amendments to the published
score - 42 in the first act, 52 in the second, 39 in the third and 48 in
the fourth - all concerned with regularising all the vagueness and ill judged
practices that had accumulated from performances over the years. Only three
of these, however, affect the actual notes in the score, the most striking
of them being the addition of a rising flute line set against the harp notes
just after Rodolfo begins "Che gelida manina".
As Chailly comments, "But the notes themselves, of course, cannot convey
everything. The new edition contains a wealth of detail regarding tempi,
dynamics accents and phrasing…" One of the most striking points Chailly
makes seems to contradict Beecham when it is claimed that - "Puccini objected
strongly when anything was performed too slowly. Ricci (a vocal coach who
worked for some years with Puccini on the rehearsal and staging of his operas)
remembers him at rehearsals calling out to the conductor "Maestro! If you
fall asleep, we'll all fall asleep!" and "Lively, lively, maestro! Don't
slow down too much…!" Puccini liked to have a sense of tempos pressing
ahead. The first part of the first act, like the first part of the fourth,
has to move with a youthful freshness without any sentimental lingering."
Musetta's waltz-song should be brisk and not sentimentalised "if it sounds
like something from an operetta, it's the performance that is to blame"…
This interview/article makes absorbing reading and I recommend that it is
not passed over when this set is purchased.
The Reviews
The opera is set in the Latin Quarter of Paris, commencing on Christmas Eve,
1830 - revolution had occurred in the City in the July of that year. Official
provision against hunger and destitution had been inadequate throughout the
1820s.
Act I - the artists' studio.
The opera opens with poet, Rodolfo and painter Marcello
shivering in the intense cold before the poet decides to sacrifice a manuscript
to the stove. Beecham and Karajan's evocation of the chill and the warming
fire are vivid with the former just ahead (it is amazing to discover the
Beecham recording is in mono for it is so involving and sounds so realistic).
Colline (the philosopher) joins them as the fire goes out but high spirits
ensue when the musician, and fourth member of their group, Schaunard appears
laden with food. Just as he suggests they eat out, their landlord, Benoit,
appears demanding the rent. He is plied with drink, made to look a fool and
thrown out. Fernando Coreno (bass) on the Beecham set (doubling as Alcindoro,
Musetta's elderly beau, as customary) is excellent as the grasping lascivious
landlord, so too is Alfredo Mariotti on the Chailly set [Interestingly, Mariotti
has not only sung La Bohème under several very famous conductors
directly linked to Puccini, but he actually studied under Luigi Ricci (see
above in the note on this recording).]
The bohemians leave for dinner, all except Rodolfo who decides to remain
behind to finish some writing. A timid knock on the door interrupts him.
It is Mimi who, almost fainting with cold and hunger, wants a candle. As
she leaves, her candle blows out and she loses her key. Rodolfo helps her
to look for it in the darkness. Their hands touch… There follows the
famous arias and duet as they introduce each other and fall in love. Jussi
Björling makes a fine virile Rodolfo. What superb artistry and voice,
pleasing youthful timbre, perfect control and natural expressiveness. Pavarotti,
in great form, delivers all one would expect of him. He might, however, be
thought overly dramatic for some tastes. As good as Roberto Alagna is in
the newer recordings - especially, and understandably, with his wife Angela
Gheorghiu - he is overshadowed by these two giants. Victoria de los Angeles's
Mimi is simply ravishing. Her phrasing and sense of line is immaculate and
how she can tug at the heart strings! How the New York critic could have
dismissed her Mimi as dispassionate and sexless is beyond my comprehension.
Mirella Freni is also very impressive, subtle yet passionate with a silken
vocal line and her duet with Pavarotti is shattering. Pappano's Mimi, Leontina
Vaduva, is not so beguiling, her diction woolly and the curve of her vocal
line not so pleasing. Gheorghiu impresses more and she and Alagna deliver
another thrilling climactic duet.
Both Beecham and Karajan's readings are slower than both Pappano and Chailly.
I have to say I prefer Beecham's approach; and Karajan's keen sense of theatre
always thrills.
The sound on the Pappano recording is a bit recessed, so the playing volume
needs to be compensated accordingly. All the conductors provide warm and
sympathetic accompaniments for the singers with Beecham and Chailly adding
little extra felicities and Karajan's Berlin orchestra adding that bit more
intensity and passion, and their playing is simply glorious.
Act II - a little later outside Café Momus
The early part of this act, brimming with activity and
colour with the crowds, the street vendors, urchins, students and toy seller
belongs to Karajan who again demonstrates an acute sense of theatre. Karajan's
children's chorus is outstanding and the Berlin strings give opulent support
to the growing affection between Rodolfo and Mimi. As Mimi and the bohemians
sit outside the Café Momus, Musetta appears on the arm of her elderly
admirer Alcindoro. She immediately sets out to make her former lover, Marcello
jealous by singing her famous waltz-song. Of all the Musettas, I favour Elizabeth
Harwood on Karajan's recording. Harwood, I felt, was often undervalued, and
in this role she is excellent - saucy and coquettish with Karajan accompanying
superbly; and she is really waspish in her subsequent vitriolic exchanges
with the irate Marcello (a staunch Rolando Panera on this recording). The
quartet with Rodolfo and Mimi expressing love (but Rodolfo beginning to show
his jealousy) and the bitter exchanges between Marcello and Musetta is very
successful and vivid on the Beecham and Chailly recordings. Karajan's passing
military tattoo is brilliant theatre; and the, act of course, ends with the
two sets of lovers together - but for how long?
Act III At the Barrière d'Enfer, one of the toll gates of Paris,
on an early morning in February.
There is a tavern on the left where Marcello's signboard is hung. Snow lies
on the ground. People wait to be admitted to the City, while customs officials
doze around a brazier. Beecham captures this scene brilliantly. The chill
evoked by the RCA Victor Orchestra is palpable, so too is the contrasting
warmth from the brazier. Sounds of hilarity come from the tavern as Mimi
enters weak and coughing. Marcello comes out of the tavern and sees her and
asks her if she will join them. But Mimi tells him of Rodolfo's unreasoning
jealousy and that she fears that they must part. Rodolfo emerges from the
tavern as Mimi hides behind a tree. He first complains to Marcello about
Mimi's being something of a coquette but then reveals the truth - his fear
that she is dying. A cough gives Mimi away and she and Rodolfo agree to part
but then feel it is better to stay together through the hard winter and then,
perhaps, part in the Spring. As they draw closer, Marcello who had been
experiencing better relations with Musetta now thinks she is up to her old
tricks again flirting in the inn and so they fall out again. This dramatic
switch occurs in the quartet that so impressed Leonard Bernstein (see the
end paragraph of the opening discussion of this opera).
Robert Merrill's Marcello on the Beecham set is strong and understanding
in his exchanges with Mimi and vituperative with Musetta - the sparks really
fly. Simon Keenlyside as Marcello on the Chailly set and Thomas Hampson impress
too (the dependable Hampson is consistently good) on the Pappano recording.
Victoria de los Angeles brings a lump to the throat with her heart-rending
goodbye to Rodolfo and Björling is very natural and convincing in his
expressions of jealousy, remorse, concern and love. Pappano delivers a warmly
sympathetic third act accompaniment and again the exchanges between Rodolfo
and Mimi are natural and sympathetic. The quartet goes to Beecham and Chailly;
and, at this point, I must praise the singing of a nicely youthful-sounding
Elisabetta Scano as Musetta.
Act IV the bohemian's studio, that Spring
Marcello and Rodolfo are now separated from Musetta and Mimi. They try to
work but memories of their girls keep intruding. Colline and Schaunard enter
with a meagre meal which is eaten with mock solemnity and some horse-play
follows. Suddenly Musetta appears at the door. She tells them Mimi is outside
but is too weak to climb the stairs. Rodolfo rushes down to help her while
the others prepare a bed for her. Musetta gives Marcello her earrings to
buy medicine and cover the cost of a doctor. She then decides to go with
Marcello to buy a muff for Mimi. Colline chooses to help by pawning his overcoat
and he leaves with Schaunard. Mimi and Rodolfo keft alone reminisce over
their romance and we learn that Mimi was quite aware of Rodolfo's amorous
tactics when they first met. The others return and as Mimi drifts off into
her final sleep Musetta kneels and prays for her. Rodolfo slowly realises
from the atmosphere in the room what the others had already understood that
Mimi is dead. The curtain falls on his cry of anguish.
Beecham's and Karajan's readings of the early part of the act are high-spirited;
and their lovers' final duets are most moving. Nicolai Ghiaurov on the Karajan
set is particularly appealing as the otherwise stoical Colline as he decides
to bid farewell to his treasured overcoat. Pappano's artists shine in this
final act too. There is delicacy and subtlety of shading in the opening exchanges
between Marcello (Hampson is very good here) and Rodolfo as they reminisce
about their estranged loves at the beginning of the act. Pappano also adds
little telling touches like the sinister turns of phrase when Colline explains
that he is summoned by the king (Louis Phillipe) to the ministry and some
plot might be afoot. Chailly's recording is distinguished by a most moving
final duet by Gheorghiu and Alagna. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo's Colline impresses
too.
The Naxos Budget Version
Naxos prove once again that you don't need to have big star names to deliver
fine performances. Under Humburg's direction, the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony
Orchestra is magnificent; wonderfully expressive, polished, refined with
immaculate phrasing and nicely judged rubato. Carmen Gonzales is a really
coquettish Musetta equalling Elizabeth Harwood on the Karajan set in appeal.
Her Marcello (Fabio Previati) is equally impressive; volatile and articulate.
While Jonathan Welch as Rodolfo does not have such an appealing timbre as
Pavarotti or Björling (he has a slight tremolo and is a trifle nasally),
he is, nevertheless, ardent and passionate enough; and his Act III and IV
duets with Orgonasova are heart-rending. Luba Orgonasova cannot really compete
with the divas of the full price versions either. Like Welch, her timbre
is not so appealing - sometimes sounding suitably girlish but at other points
in her register, she seems a little, dare I say it, matronly, and certainly
too full-toned to sound consumptive. Yet she sings confidently and is sensitive
to all the emotional shades of her role. Unsurprisingly, for a super-budget
release the documentation is not so full, the libretto comes in Italian only.
All in all, and taking the low price into consideration, I unhesitatingly
recommend this set as alternative listening to any of the full priced recordings
reviewed above.
Conclusion
It was a fascinating experience listening to these four performances one
after another, act by act. After the older two recordings, of Beecham and
Karajan, the newer two seemed to be something of a disappointment yet there
is much to admire in both of them particularly Chailly's recording.
I rank Beecham and Karajan in joint first place and say that I would favour
each depending on my mood. If I wanted a more natural, slightly more restrained
yet moving reading I would go for Beecham - if I needed more passion and
a really sumptuous and theatrical account then I would have to plump for
Karajan. If I was sent to a desert island and told I could only have one
recording, then it would have to be Beecham.
Of the two newer recordings, my money goes on the Chailly version.
I will conclude by quoting, once again from Conrad Wilson, When Puccini completed
La Bohème in his study at midnight on 10 December 1895,
three years after he had begun it, he burst into tears, so great was his
own emotion. Sentimental though it may seem, it was the death of Mimi that
did it to him. The man who has often been accused of 'manipulating' his audience
clearly found it easy to manipulate his own emotions, to the extent that,
on finishing Bohème, he admitted that he had - 'had to get
up and, standing in the middle of the study, alone in the silence of the
night, I began to weep like a child. It was as though I had seen my own child
die.'"
Reviewer
Ian Lace
Recommended reading, the book quoted in this article: Giacomo Puccini by
Conrad Wilson Phaidon Press 240 pages.
Purchase
