Not the most star-studded cast ever assembled for a recording of La boheme, nor is the conductor’s name an especially familiar one, but although this is not a live recording with an audience (it was made on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, but under studio conditions, on three successive Sundays) it is a ‘company’ performance. Tucker had sung his first Rodolfo only a month before, but he sounds like part of a team, each member of which knows this opera and this production of it inside out. He is in fine, youthful, effortlessly produced voice and his line is immaculately sustained, never broken by histrionics. All the others are first-class ensemble singers but the star, undoubtedly, is Bidu Sayao. Her voice has great charm and touching purity, she sings expressively but never overdoes her acting, and the intimacy of her portrayal, which makes the last act so moving, is perhaps surprising from a soprano who had sung this role so often in such a huge auditorium.
She might have been even more expressive if she had been allowed a little more elbow-room for subtlety of inflexion in the latter part of “Si, mi chiamano Mimi”. This is one case (Colline’s “Vecchia zimarra” is another) where Antonicelli’s commendably lively tempos (Act 2 is splendidly vigorous) seem to rush the music a little; Benzell’s unexaggerated Musetta, too, could have done with a touch more flexibility for her little solo in Act 4. Elsewhere Antonicelli’s control of rubato is admirable, the fruit no doubt of having worked with these singers in these roles so often. This recording has always been overshadowed by Toscanini’s, made in the previous year with Licia Albanese as Mimi and Jan Peerce as Rodolfo but with an otherwise identical cast; on this count alone I prefer Antonicelli’s.
The presentation of the discs, as with others in Sony’s Heritage series, is exemplary, with photographs of the sessions, reproductions of the original 78 album and the subsequent LP sleeve, the CDs themselves reproducing Columbia’s label design of the period. But this is not just a reissue for nostalgic collectors: it is a remarkable portrait of the traditions and strengths of a great opera company at a period when the word ‘company’ still had a meaning. The recording, though in mono, is highly evocative of the grand auditorium in which it was made.MEO