Search - Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Jan Latham Koenig, Lucia Mazzaria :: Leoncavallo - La Bohème / Mazzaria, Malagnini, Summers, Spagnoli, Senn, Latham-Koenig

Si, mi chiamano La Boheme (I)

L. E. Cantrell | Vancouver, British Columbia Canada | 08/30/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Source: Recorded during live performances at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, January 23-30, 1990.



Sound: Adequate digital stereo for a live performance. The audience is unusually quiet except for occasional bursts of applause at appropriate places. Mercifully, hardly any booming footsteps are to be heard, but there are numerous clanks, rattles and bangs from the use of stage props.



Cast: Musette - Martha Senn; Marcello - Mario Malagnini; Mimi - Lucia Mazzaria; Rodolfo - Jonathan Summers; Schaunard - Bruno Pratice; Colline/Visconte Paulo - Pietro Spagnoli; Barbemuche - Silvano Pagliuca; Durand/Gaudencio - Romano Emili; Signore Primo Piano/Un Becero - Giampaolo Grazioli; Eufemia - Cinzia de Mola. Conductor - Jan Latham Koenig.



Format: Two disks, 133 minutes.



Puccini's "La Boheme" was produced in Turin on February 1, 1896. Although Leoncavallo seems to have begun writing first, his opera came a distant second on May 6, 1897 in Venice. "Since that time," wrote Silvia Camerini in an essay that accompanied an earlier three-disk version of this performance, "a simplistic and senseless mistake has always been made: that of comparing the two Bohèmes. Indeed, apart from the common source of their inspiration, the artistic personalities of the two composers and the consequent interpretations are so different and distinct one from the other as to render any serious comparison impossible." That statement earns both the fur-lined teacup and the leather medal for being one of the most fatuous statements in the famously fatuous literature of opera. How can anyone NOT compare the two Bohemes?



Here is Leoncavallo's plot:



-- Act 1. Rodolfo (baritone), Mimi, Marcello (tenor), Musette and friends are having a Christmas Eve party at the Cafe Momus. They have trouble paying the bill.



-- Act 2. Musette is behind on her rent and is being evicted from her apartment. Her furniture has been placed in the street. Marcello sympathizes and invites her to move in with him. They decide to have a party right there in the street. During the party, Mimi is approached by Visconte Paolo who offers her love and a life of luxury. Tired of living in poverty with Rodolfo in his garret, Mimi joins him (reluctantly).



-- Act 3. Musette loves Marcello but she is fed up with being poor. She is about to leave when Mimi appears. Mimi has come to beg Rodolfo to take her back. While the two women talk, Marcello comes in. Musette tells him she is leaving. An argument ensues. Marcello becomes convinced that her betrayal has been caused by Mimi. When Rodolfo turns up, Marcello denounces Mimi to him. Rodolfo refuses to hear Mimi's denials and tells her that his love for her is dead.



-- Act 4. Christmas time again, Marcello tells Rodolfo he has written a letter asking for Musette's return but has received no reply. Mimi appears. She has been cast aside by the Visconte and has become sick. Having nothing and nowhere else to go, she begs to stay the night. They take her in but are distraught that they can do nothing more for her. Musette arrives. She gives a bracelet and a ring to Schaunard to purchase medicine for Mimi, but it is too late. Mimi dies in Rodolfo's arms.



Even boiled down as far as this, it is clear that Puccini had a better story-sense than Leoncavallo, who wrote his own libretto. I have never come across a copy of Murger's book, but I would bet that Leoncavallo preserved more of its original elements than Puccini. Leoncavallo's people are cheerful in his first two acts, but never quite as cheerful as Puccini's, for there is always a certain grim denial hanging about them. His final two acts are unrelieved gloom. I suspect that Puccini's librettists originally delivered something quite like Leoncavallo's storyline to that notoriously difficult man and that he threw it back at them, insisting that they cut out everything extraneous in order to focus on Mimi.



As for the music, bar for bar and phrase for phrase, Puccini and Leoncavallo are writing in pretty much the same verismo idiom. Leoncavallo can match Puccini in providing orchestral lushness but he seems less inclined to do so. Puccini has the better sense of overall structure, brilliantly mixing darkness and light in three of his four acts. Leoncavallo goes straight from two acts of giddiness into two acts of unrelieved gloom.



Regarding the individual arias, sometimes the similarities get downright eerie. In Act II, the tenor Marcello finds Musette's furniture in the street. He asks her to move in with him in "Io no ho che un povera stanzetta" (rendered by one translation in lumpy fashion as "I've but a poor little room." Leoncavallo's aria has the texture and spirit of "Che gelida manina" almost perfectly but it does not develop from that point. Musette does not reply to Marcello in the same heightened manner that Puccini's Mimi does to Rodolfo and there is no advance into glorious duet.



Despite my nitpicking, Leoncavallo's "La Boheme" is a sound piece of work with some good tunes. Had it not been torpedoed by Puccini, it would probably be lurking at the edges of the standard repertory in very much the same manner as "Adriana Lecouvreur." As an alternative version of a great masterpiece, it should be in every serious collection of opera recordings, just like, say, Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor."



This particular performance is all right, but no more. The cast is competent but resolutely, relentlessly B-list. Some years ago, a recording with Franco Bonisolli and Lucia Popp (Orfeo 23822) earned glowing press reviews. I had not heard that recording in years, but this Nuova Era recording seemed pallid against my memories. Fortunately, the little chunklets that Amazon provides on-line allowed me to confirm my recollections. Remember the aria, "Io no ho che un povera stanzetta"? Bonisolli sings journeyman tenor Mario Malagnini straight into the ground.



This is a fairly good opera that is presented in a performance best described as ho-hum.



Three stars."

Nice work, but the Wallberg set on Orfeo is preferable

G.D. | Norway | 12/16/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The story of the genesis of Leoncavallo's opera as related to Puccini's is a little murky, but the fact that both composers decided to set La bohene seems to be due to sheer coincidence. Puccini's version was certainly premiered before the Leoncavallo, but they apparently started working on them quite independently of each other, and Leoncavallo might have started first.



Certainly the results are very different ... or so several critics seem to claim. But firsthand listening cannot shake the feeling that the similarities are more prominent than the differences. The operas are actually surprisingly similar, at least in terms of the musical language. There are differences in the story, of course - in Leoncavallo's version, for instance, Marcello and Musette are the main characters. Neither is there really any doubts regarding which version is the better opera, but Leoncavallo's La boheme is certainly a more than worthwhile work in itself. He was definitely able to come up with some good tunes, and knew how to orchestrate them. He also knew how to vary the emotions, although one is struck by the contrast between the two parts of the opera. You cannot really talk about a journey from happiness and light to darkness here; whereas the first part is pure happiness, darkness is suddenly all-pervasive in the second.



The performances are generally good, but certainly no match for the Orfeo set under Wallberg. Jonathan Summers gives a good characterization of Rodolfo, and I have no major complaints about Martha Senn as Musette, at least, but comparing, say, Malagningi to Bonisolli on the Orfeo, the differences in interpretation and the sheer sound of the voice is undeniable. Indeed, the Orfeo set is superior in more or less every way. Latham Koenig has a good grip on the score, and the sound quality is decent for a live performance. In short, while you won't go seriously wrong with this set, the Orfeo one is clearly the one to go for. And I think you ought to consider it - Leoncavallo's La boheme is, despite being no match for Puccini, a truly memorable work and would have deserved a place in the repertoire."