Quite small points can colour your reaction to a recording of La boheme. ''Cerchi'' (''look for it'') says Mimi of the hastily pocketed door-key in Act 1, and in Tebaldi's authoritatively firm voice it's an order. ''Cerca?'' (''are you looking?''), she adds a moment or two later, and you rather feel that if Rodolfo doesn't find it soon he'll get a clout round the ear from her handbag. This Rodolfo mark you, could melt even such a self-possessed Mimi as she is: we'll find it in the moonlight, he says, ''and up here the moon is very close'', with the hint of a rueful smile: even garrets have their advantages for a poet. Tebaldi can sing quietly when needed, and she can of course spin a beautiful legato line; the problem is (and for many it will be no problem at all) that the amplitude of her voice and manner is not counter-balanced by those intimate details (colouring of words expressive subtlety of phrasing) that would have made her Mimi touching as well as finely and generously sung. Bergonzi is stylish throughout, as is Bastianini, and the rest of the cast is pretty strong, though you might find the Musetta a bit too shrill, the Benoit and Alcindoro caricatured (as usual) and the Colline is audibly corseting a vastly cavernous voice.
Tebaldi gives an undoubtedly star performance (though of Tosca, much of the time, not Mimi) but the real star of the recording is Serafin. Eighty years old when the recording was made, his ardour is as urgently youthful as his brilliance and his lightly touched detailing are so obviously the fruit of a long lifetime's loving study of the score. Beecham's EMI (mono) version remains hors concours: a performance as fine in all its parts as you are ever likely to hear. Serafin runs him pretty close, but does not unify his cast as magically. His account was famous in its day for the spaciousness of its recording (though the voices are recessed into the orchestra at times), and it still sounds good, if rather brighter in this format than it was.'