Anyone who knows that there is much more to La boheme than voices will want to hear Bernstein's account of it; not in Beecham's EMI recording, not even in Davis's outstandingly lucid (if otherwise rather clinical) Philips reading is quite so much of the orchestral detail so transparently audible. Indeed, I quite often found myself listening through the voices, so to speak, to some subtlety of harp figuration or wind chording that one often has no hope of hearing at all. Bernstein obviously loves the score very much, and although his affection sometimes leads him to choose distinctly slow speeds (uncomfortably slow for his singers, once or twice), the beauty of Puccini's orchestration, his precise ear for evocative colour and his mastery of cumulative detail (and the occasional reminder that he was a contemporary of Mahler) are finely conveyed.
Indeed, this would be a Boheme worthy of high comparisons were it not for the casting of the principal roles, which is eccentric in the case of the two women, inconsiderate in that of the tenor. Both sopranos are soubrettes under pressure (it is difficult in Act 2, still more disturbingly so in the counterpointed love duet and blazing row in Act 3, to tell them apart). Reaux's voice is bright, hardedged and imperfectly controlled, with a fast and occasionally wide vibrato. Purity, simplicity and intimacy are not within her range, she has intensity of tone but not of expression (she does very little with her words, even mispronouncing several of them), and she is never even slightly moving. Daniels is a pert, sparkish Musetta, Strauss's Zerbinetta or Fiakermilli transported to the Latin Quarter, and she over-acts like anything. My ears are still ringing from her shrieks and piercing laughter in Act 2.
Hadley, on the other hand, is a musical and likeable lyric tenor, of the qualities one wants of a Rodolfo he lacks only Italianate richness of tone (the voice is rather light in texture, and again bright of colour) and the ability or willingness to sing quietly above G or thereabouts. His ''Che gelida manina'' is both sincerely ardent and convincingly youthful, but he ignores many of Puccini's dynamic markings and, like his Mimi puts his voice under a pressure it should not be asked to withstand. Hampson as Marcello, however, is a discovery: his warmly beautiful, expertly used voice is youthful-sounding also, but he never forces and gives a performance of real character and distinction. Plishka is a prosaic Colline, Busterud an unpleasantly gritty Schaunard, Beni a conventionally caricatured Alcindoro. There is good choral work, though, including some admirably in-tune children.
The close recording, which renders what Bernstein is doing with such amazing clarity (though without much depth of perspective), is not flattering to the higher voices. If the casting of Reaux, Daniels and Hadley in these roles is unkind, their presentation in the acoustic equivalent of a pitiless white light is cruel. There is more to La boheme than voices, yes, but with voices so sadly misused even Bernstein's Boheme is less than Boheme.'