Puccini la Bohème

Oscar-nominated director Robert Dornhelm lends the story a darker glow, with Bertrand de Billy's soft-centred but warm conducting and two superb star performances. Villazón as Rodolfo, less… sings with a focused intensity which at time recalls Caruso, and makes a scruffily credible hero… Netrebko's creamy-voiced Mimì is no naïve little seamstress; her scarlet satin and glamour-girl make-up suggests she's been around… but her anguish in Act III is no less heartfelt. Dornhelm's sombrely sumptuous images capture a credibly chilly, squalid, yet defiantly romantic milieu.

The musical notes of this Puccini masterpiece provide the starting point and foundation for a new, highly successful collaboration between Riccardo Chailly and Davide Livermore. In their interpretation, there is “no moment, no movement, that goes against the musical meaning” (R. Chailly). The result is an energetic, authentic, and atmospherically strong Bohème, “in which every sacred phrase receives its own orchestral colour, its own dynamic and its own expression.” (Corriere della Sera)

"This Bohème is a glorious vindication of traditional staging at its imaginative, re-creative best. Giancarlo Del Monaco here turns his attention to the much more popular work and comes up with a humdinger of a production, beautifully set by Michael Scott in period, fast-moving and full of pertinent detail." (Gramophone)

Yes! It is a brilliant work and does contain some of Puccini's most memorable melodies. So if you have to have a Puccini La Bohemè in your collection, then, this is the one. It has THE best casts on record , You have Scotto at her riveting best as Mimi & the wonderful Carol Neblett as Musetta, the best in these rolls.Then there are the men: Alfredo Kraus as Rodolfo, Sherrill Milnes as Marcello, Paul Plishka as Colline & Matteo Manuguerra as Schaunard. What more can you ask for, eat your heart out.-Amazon-

Mathieu van Bellen and Mathias Halvorsen present an ambitious and first ever completly instrumental arrangement of Giaccomo Puccini’s entire opera La Bohème. The musicians have arranged the score themselves, bringing together the parts of the soloists, the choir and the orchestra into a hyper-virtuosic piece for just violin and piano. Recorded live in front of an audience, van Bellen and Halvorsen give everything they have; bringing forth each scene in an expressive and highly evocative tour de force.

Mimì, the happy-go-lucky young Parisian discovering the torments of love and facing the dread of illness and finitude is an endearing character, easy to identify with. If Maria Callas never had the opportunity to portray it live on stage, she masterfully embodied her on record in 1956. Mimì’s zest for life, simplicity and frailty have rarely been more intensely rendered than in this fiery version featuring a beautiful cast. Callas and Di Stefano’s love duet sends sparks flying!