Puccini-La Bohème

The only two "names" in this recording who are likely to be remembered today are Beniamino Gigli and Licia Albanese, and both certainly display the qualities that made them famous. Gigli's youthful, glowing tone perfectly embodies in aural terms the poet's character, while Albanese's delicately shimmering and mature-sounding voice (she was, in fact, considerably younger than Gigli) makes Mimi both the shy charmer and slightly more worldly woman we come to know later in the opera.

It helps tremendously that these two really give themselves over to the characters and really listen to each other. Their scene in act one is a miracle of tone color and word-pointing, so that the listener feels as though he or she is hearing this music for the first time. Later, in act three, the drama darkens, and Gigli and Albanese do as well, keeping cheap sentiment at a minimum but character and drama at the forefront. Gigli does allow himself to join Albanese for the top C at the close of the first act, but with such a cherishable singer, it is a liberty that can be overlooked.

The rest of the cast are equally adept at bringing the text to life and creating their characters as if for the first time, providing ample and excellent support to their two star colleagues. Afro Poli as Marcello starts the opera off nicely and allows the brutish and suave sides of his character to coexist nicely, whereas most modern-day interepreters of the part tend to choose one or the other. His tone is full and blooming, turning coarse only under pressure. Tatiana Menotti fields an apt instrument for Musetta, without the shrillness or wiriness common to Musettas of the period. She colors her voice with a touch of acidity in the right places, such as the shoe episode in the second act or the quartet in the third. The rest of the cast is equally fine, balancing beautifully the light and shade within this opera.

It cannot be mere coinicidence that a recording this good was made at La Scala by an all-Italian cast, orchestra, chorus, and conductor. Umberto Berrettoni leads his forces surprisingly well, considering the opera had to be recorded in 4-5 minute takes so as to fit on 78 sides. Only a few spots are rushed or indelicately handled.

In summary, this 1938 recording is one of the glories of the pre-LP years. Unless you are completely allergic to the sound of vintage recordings, I urge you to hear this "Boheme" and experience for yourself this revelatory performance.

First and foremost, it is a performance indigenous to its time and place. These are all native Italians performing what was, even then, the best-known and loved of Italian operas, so for them the characters were real, the operatic language natural and idiomatic, the music a means of personal expression. It has been claimed for so many decades that Gigli was a "terrible musician" that it is good to hear him in a complete role dear to his heart and to analyze his good and bad points. Among the bad, a tendency to break the vocal line with chuckles and sobs, some of them called for but many of them not; the interjection of spoken words not in the score (mostly in act one); and an ingrained habit of attacking high notes cleanly but using a portamento to slide DOWN from them. But here are his good points, which in my view are considerable: the ability to reflect the various moods of the character through vocal placement and coloration; a rhythmic acuity-the ability to hit his rhythms dead-on and use them to "bounce" the music when appropriate-much greater than Caruso or Bjorling; and an impetuosity of forward momentum, even in tragic and legato passages, that keeps him from lingering unnecessarily to wring greater pathos out of the score. Aside from those interpolated spoken words, his most grievous musical flaw is to jump into "Che gelida manina" one beat earlier than he should, which Albanese told a friend of mine was artistic choice and not a mental lapse.

As for the rest of the cast, they are superb, especially Afro Poli as Marcello, the young Albanese as a less innocent Mimi than we are used to, and Tatiana Menotti as the most interesting and well-developed Musetta on records. The other musical "infractions" all occur as the result of the cast applying the time-honored traits of Italian opera buffo to those sections of "Bohème" that sound good with it: turning occasional written notes into parlando, imbuing the characters with life and sparkle. Toscanini loathed the buffo style and Beecham never understood it, so between them they drained much of the life out of this unique little comic-tragedy. Umberto Berrettoni's orchestra is not as unified or as sharp in attacks as we have gotten used to, yet his brisk approach is very much in keeping with the tradition that Puccini all but imposed at La Scala in the 1910s and early '20s. (Puccini was famous for yelling at conductors in rehearsal when they took passages too slowly.) Thus, in some ways, the performing traditions of this recording have their roots in the composer's wishes. Of modern recordings, only the Chailly captures some of the briskness and humor of this one. Beecham, for all his luxuriousness and tonal beauty, is to be faulted for sentimentalizing "Bohème" for modern audiences, of turning a brisk, vital work into romantic sentiment....not to mention that de los Angeles, Bjorling and Robert Merrill had absolutely NO personality or concept of who and what these characters are. Albanese, Gigli and Poli get them right.

The dry studio sound of the era, though considerably improved by Ward Marston, is indeed a detriment, and I am sure there are many modern listeners who will cringe at it; but, for those who don't, this is certainly a "Bohème" to be treasured, if not the only recording one would want.