[Met Performance] CID:161550



La Bohème
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, January 7, 1953




La Bohème (473)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa
Mimì
Hilde Güden

Rodolfo
Eugene Conley

Musetta
Regina Resnik

Marcello
Frank Guarrera

Schaunard
Clifford Harvuot

Colline
Nicola Moscona

Benoit
Lawrence Davidson

Alcindoro
Alessio De Paolis

Parpignol
Paul Franke

Sergeant
Algerd Brazis


Conductor
Alberto Erede







Review 1:

Review of Virgil Thomson in The New York Herald Tribune

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The singing of the evening was notable for the lovely lyric freshness of Eugene Conley's Rodolfo and for the sound musicianship of Hilde Güden's Mimi. Dramatically Miss Güden was distant, and her voice was cold. Only in the third act did she warm up even a little bit. Mostly she just walked through pre-arranged motions. Even her voice had a veil over it, an ever so-slight buzz that she seemed to be aware of and that prevented her from projecting the quick sentiments of youth with anything like the frankness and spontaneity of Mr. Conley. But her musicianship was everywhere a delight, gave tone to the evening.

Frank Guarrera, as Marcello, was excellent too; and the Colline and Schaunard of Nicola Moscona and Clifford Harvout were surely pleasing enough. Regina Resnik, as Musetta, looking for all the world, in facial expression, like the Duchess of Windsor, seemed to this listener wholly miscast vocally. Her voice has the heaviness, the dark timbre and the limited upper range of a contralto, though she passes for a dramatic soprano. In the brilliant lyric soprano line of Musetta's Waltz Song, she gave somewhat the effect of a steam caliope playing Delibes' Pizzicato Polka. Her third act and her middle-range work were not without elegance; but on the whole she was a bit overpowering both vocally and dramatically. And her high B's were neither pleasing nor wholly accurate.

In general the casting seemed temporary, as it had done at the opera's opening in English week before last. It is rather a shame that a production otherwise so carefully prepared should not have been conceived with a well-matched and relatively permanent cast in view for either its English or its Italian first presentation. The strength of the Metropolitan's best productions has long been dependent on good casting and on the preservation in their roles of as large a number as possible of the artists who have been rehearsed in them for the initial performance.



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