Customer Reviews

Conducts La Boheme

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had owned this version on the RCA budget label, and, though I found the performance compelling, could'nt put up with the boxy muffled sound. What a surprize when I put on these CD's! The engineers have truly worked a miracle, bringing the sound quality up to the standard of many of the best mono recordings. The performance is the most involved and commited you will ever encounter, with Albanese's voice given much more bloom by the new remastering. Incredible detail is heard in the orchestra, and all of the characterizations! These sound like living people, not opera singers performing roles. This is the true "Boheme" experience!

I HAVE OWN THIS RECORDING FOR OVER 20 YEARS. TOSCANINI SING ALL THROUGH THIS OPERA. YOU WILL NEVER HERE IT DONE LIKE THIS ANYWERE NOW OR LATER.,THERE ARE BETTER SINGERS BUT NOT BETTER CONDUCTING, THE NBC GOT IT OVER EVERYONE.

This is the BEST recording of La Boheme. The Maestro conducting is wonderful ! This is a must have! Something different.

And a love that Toscanini sings!

I was warned by the other reviews that Toscanini sings along, but he's a lot more distracting and annoying than I expected. He chooses the lines we all look forward to to sing the loudest, off key. I hope the next step in the remastering process will be to remove his voice from this beautiful performance.

Considering the high quality performances I am used to hearing from Toscanini-NBC--the 1940 "Missa Solemnis," the 1946 "Otello," the 1951 Verdi "Requiem" and the 1953 "Falstaff"--this one is shockingly bad. Licia Albanese, a famous Mimi and a good one (I heard her sing the role "live" 27 years after this recording was made, and very well) was not in great voice: some of her high notes are rather weak and she loses both breath and pitch in the high C that ends "O soave fanciulla." Yet she and basso Salvatore Baccaloni (Benoit/Alcindoro) are the ONLY singers in this cast who project their characters with any life!! Frank Valentino is a coarse-voiced Marcello, Ann McKnight (Musetta) slithers through her staccato passages and is not "with" the orchestra rhythmically, Nicola Moscona is a solid but boring Colline, and Jan Peerce is a simply DREADFUL Rodolfo. Was there ever a more boring tenor, one less interesting or interested in the words and music? He had only two volume levels, loud and louder, his high notes are hoarse, and he sounds about as interested in Mimi as he might be in a new muffler for his car. Why Toscanini liked this guy is utterly beyond me. Even Placido Domingo sings a more ardent Rodolfo, and Domingo is scarcely the subtlest or most romantic tenor around. Peerce, in fact, kills the performance. He reminds me of a comment Toscanini once shouted to a Rodolfo (presumably not Peerce): "You supposed to be a young lover, but you sing like a married man!!" I honestly believe that Toscanini sang along more with him than with Albanese because he could "hear" the music being done better--in fact, hoarse and off-key as he is, Toscanini sings some of the lines of "Che gelida manina" with more feeling, "con amore," than Peerce.

In short, then, a historic curio for students of conducting only. You want to know how "Boheme" should be conducted, buy it. You want to know how "Boheme" should be sung, buy the Freni-Pavarotti version, or even the somewhat prosaic De Los Angeles-Bjorling recording.