[Met Tour] CID:150310



La Bohème
Boston Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts, Wed, March 30, 1949




La Bohème (427)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
Mimì
Bidú Sayão

Rodolfo
Ferruccio Tagliavini

Musetta
Mimi Benzell

Marcello
Frank Valentino

Schaunard
Hugh Thompson

Colline
Nicola Moscona

Alcindoro/Benoit
Melchiorre Luise

Parpignol
Anthony Marlowe

Sergeant
Lawrence Davidson


Conductor
Giuseppe Antonicelli







Review 1:

L. G. Gaffney in an unidentified Boston newspaper

Tagliavini Brilliant in Best “La Bohème” in Many Seasons

 

“Give me tenors and I don’t need scenery.”

 

The bearded Gatti, the Met’s impresario in its heyday, said it years ago and it applied as well last night when Ferruccio Tagliavini, who has become famous lately in more ways than one, sang Rodolfo in “La Bohème” and filled the Opera House to bursting.

 

Well into the second act disappointed ticket seekers infested the outer lobby, teasing anyone who came late to sell them a pasteboard at almost any unreasonable price.

 

While inside the huge auditorium extra chairs to the limit of regulations were placed for the idolaters of the pear-shaped tone in the highest natural voice of men.

 

In the matter of tone Mr. Tagliavini did not let his hearers down. In the honeyed notes of the most famous lyric tenor on this side of the water, Tagliavini met his Mimi in that unheated Parisian garret, murmured mellifluously about the coldness of her hands, then departed with her down the stairs with a healthy hold on the high one that ends the scene.

 

The house was his. That’s what they came for, since there’s nothing that pleases a grand opera audience so much as to have the tenor send a high B-flat hurling over their head. It is an operatic home run.

 

All the same it was a fine “ Bohème” even without Tagliavini, the best in years. Bidu Sayao was the Mimi of your dreams. Her appearance alone made credible the pretty consumptive girl of the Latin Quarter and her graceful management of the lovely airs and difficult intervals of the tricky Puccini score, compelled admiration.

 

The Musetta of Mimi Benzell – another Mimi! – was something too. From the pink plume atop her florid hat to the dainty shoes of which she complained so piquantly in the second act, Miss Benzell looked like a flash of Renoir, and she matched her behavior to her singing.

 

The staging and ensemble was one of the Met’s very best and the conducting of Antonicelli evoked and controlled what the composer intended.

 

Tonight it is “Peter Grimes.” Seats are available.



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