Customer Reviews

Puccini: La Boheme

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A perfect cast, a sensitive interpretation by a great conductor, a brilliant work. What more could anyone ask for? This is truly one of the handful of greatest opera recordings of all time. de los Angeles and Bjorling are perfect. Robert Merrill has just the right vocal weight to match Bjorling. Beecham is deeply insightful in his interpretation. If you love this opera, or if you just plain love opera at all, buy this disc.

By the way, some other nominees for the greatest opera recordings of all time include Guilini's version of Don Giovanni, Callas in Tosca, and Milanov and Bjorling in Il Trovatore. I'll return to this site from time to time to read other listeners' nominations.

By the way, too bad Amazon buried this recording so deep into the listings of La Boheme. Many potential buyers might not have the patience to scroll all the way to this performance.

Another small point: the Callas version, which is quite good, if not quite up to this one, was given only one star by a reviewer upset over the way Amazon spelled the word Boheme. I think that unfairly gives a worse impression of that performance than it deserves.

This was the recording that hooked me into Italian opera. I listened to it endlessly in the 70's.

I really can't add to the more than deserved accolades the other reviewers heap upon it. So I'll just add a few notes (so to speak).

The single most affecting element to me is Bjoerling's burnished voice. Next is Beecham's conducting. But really, it's the totality of the performance. I think Mimi might not have been quite so saintly (she was a bohemian, after all), but De los Angeles' performance is quite affecting. And, to my ears, the sound is unexpectedly quite decent.

But as I just think of this recording I can feel the tear ducts starting to well, as well as remembering endless hours of pleasure this recording has afforded me.

My wife (not an opera fan, although she likes Boheme) made a (literally) passing comment one day when I put this on: "They sound like they really mean it."

About everything in this recording is perfect: the style, the singers, you are really carried into the world of the "Bohémiens" in old Paris. There is one thing which makes this recording extraordinary, which is the singing and vocal performing of Jussi Bjoerling - perfect in style, beautiful the voice and touching his version of the character. If you don't have it, get it NOW!

This 1956 recording has long been held as a yardstick against which all others are judged and rightly so. Indeed, no other recording of La Boheme approaches the dramatic truth as closely and unerringly as this one. The cast, headed by the incomparable duo of Victoria de los Angeles and Jussi Bjorling, makes the plights of the bohemians utterly believable. Victoria de los Angeles is perhaps the loveliest of all the sopranos who sing Mimi. Her subtlety of nuances, melting vulnerability and warmth of feeling make us believe that she IS Mimi. Similarly, Jussi Bjorling makes us believe that he IS Rudolfo. Like de los Angeles, he is perhaps the ONLY exponent of the role on records to be credible both as a lover and as a poet. The Grammophone reviewer Michael Oliver describes Bjorling's performance most aptly: 'he caress his words as well as weep and his love for Mimi is often confided than it is bellowed for all Paris to hear'. Sir Thomas Beecham achieves a fine sense of rapport with his cast and the RCA orchestra. He directs with sincere affection and an acute attention to many subtle details in the score often missed by other conductors. Overall, the entire performance glows with warmth of heart and overwhelming beauty of spirit. This is a set that no Puccini collection, and indeed any opera collection should be without.

P.S. Victoria de los Angeles recorded Mimi's two arias in 1954, two years before she made the complete recording, with the Rome Opera Orchestra under Francesco Molinari-Pradelli. She is even more enthralling here and her voice is both warmer and fresher. The performance can be found in the recital disc of Italian and German opera arias on EMI Reference CDH7634952. Look out for it!

A hundred years from now when opera as we know it is but a distant memory, having long ago been replaced by the product of Andrew Lloyd Webber clones, people will wonder why English speaking audiences ever willingly paid money to hear Italian opera. We didn't understand hardly a word of the language. The singing was absolutely at odds with commonly held conventions of how normal people should sing. It was history lesson. And that is what it is becoming.
But a few recordings are delaying the inevitable. If anyone can find this recording in the year 2103, that person will know why we listened to lyric Italian opera long after it stopped being written. In this recording, Jussi and Victoria give us absolute life and absolute death. Puccini has Beecham to thank for this timeless legacy.

In some performances I have attended or heard of La Bohème, I am so distracted by the poor musicianship and/or acting I spend the time making moral judgements of the protagonists. Such friends Rodolfo chooses, that bunch of wastrels! Mimi conveniently loses her candle flame, then her key, it becomes impossible to find another light and in no time she has Rodolfo scrambling about the floor. Run, Rodolfo! Then he tells his story as he tries gallantly to warm her hands. He is a pauper who spends too much, can’t pay his rent, lives on dreams, but now that he can look into her eyes he has hope – Mimi can be the saving of him! Run, Mimi! And so it goes until Mimi takes up with the Viscount... then comes crawling back when she knows the end is near. At every turn, these people insist on making the absolutely most wrong decisions possible in their pitiful little lives.

But every now and then, a performance is good enough to overcome all that and I believe the love that blooms in the cold moonlight, am filled with pity and understanding when Rodolfo and Mimi cannot part until spring, the laughable incongruity of Marcello’s fight with Musetta is made perfectly clear. So it is with this Bohème. I was going to set it aside until a Sunday afternoon when I could sit and listen to it uninterrupted, but on a Thursday night decided perhaps to hear bits and pieces, then put it on, was hardly aware when the CDs switched from one to the other. I sat from beginning to end, well past my sensible bedtime, and found myself sobbing through the closing scene.

I had a lump in my throat when Colline sang farewell to his overcoat and tears ran down my cheeks when Rodolfo discovered that Mimi was dead. (Yes, I admit; even though I know how difficult it was for a woman to survive in the 19th Century, it is Rodolfo I pity when Mimi dies.)

This is a magic blending of sounds whose equal may never be heard again. Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill’s voices blend like the confluence of two rivers. Victoria de los Angeles’ soprano matches the full, rounded richness of Björling’s incomparable tenor. Lucine Amara’s saucy Musetta has just the right amount of ancho and honey. This, combined with excellent acting, is enough to catch one up in its net, willing to suspend disbelief. Giorgio Tozzi’s Colline is the very epitome of a true friend, and even the dying Mimi convinces us that a consumptive could say her last farewells in those well-modulated tones. Sure she could. I believe it – I believe!

This is a beautiful Bohème.

I give this recording to all who show an interest in opera. I find it to be the perfect opera recording, limited sound notwithstanding. If they don't fall in love with this recording, they are not worth knowing. Enough has been said about this recording already except that the recording was done very quickly (two days) and nobody thought it would become the Boheme of all times! Do yourself a favor, just get it!

The unequaled La Boheme of our time.
They keep trying to improve on this and frankly-it will never happen.
Boerling sings effortlessly, never forcing a note, a study in nuanced delivery. His is a very sweet and warm tenor-never harsh,gliding smoothly all around the tenor scale with ease and perfect control.
De LosAngeles is equally fresh-in her prime with her classic and enduring portrayal of Puccini's doomed seamstress. Her voice is strong, beautiful and subtle.
You will not be sorry you made this investment in one of the Maestro's masterpieces.


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What more can you want from an opera like La Boheme...other than the two great singers of their time De los Angeles and Bjorling...No matter how much I am of a Callas fanatic...i would never be able to admit that Callas ever made a better recording of this opera than De los Angeles....her voice just melts and combines with the Charcter and Bjorling being the grestest tenor of the 1900's ( in my opinion ) he shows off his great skills and acting abilities here....the passion seeps through the powerful lyrics...Great great recording

I could say a lot about this recording or nothing at all. I will only say one thing: It is, overall, the best Boheme on records.

Beecham conducted the work over 300 times, and he went over numerous details in the score with the composer. You could, then, say that "musicologically" it is the most important Boheme.

Regardless, it is the most beautiful.