GREAT RECORDINGS phase 18

PUCCINI
La Bohème

Thomas Schippers

3 92005 2

Stereo
ADD

Recorded 1962 & 1963
103 minutes (2CD)

Back >>

"It is a responsive, spontaneous performance, that goes along with the music, discovering all sorts of delights on the way. There is that lovely feeling of an orchestra who could play the score in its sleep but is actually doing a wideawake job as though living it all afresh. And essentially this is what the recording does for the listener also."
(The Gramophone)

This classic 1963 Rome recording has a fascinating background: it was never intended to give us what would be Mirella Freni’s first and freshest Mimì – or indeed Nicolai Gedda’s handsome Rodolfo.

In his note, ‘La bohème: A tale of two Mimìs’, Stephen Jay-Taylor tells the story. ‘This recording, notable for the youthful freshness of its twin protagonists and the airy impulse of its conducting, might well seem to be the happy product of everything proceeding according to plan. In fact, it was the end result of more than three years of deaths, defections and dismissal.’

It began in 1960 with a plan to rerecord Beecham’s classic 1956 account in stereo. But Beecham was dying and Böjrling died, so sessions were scheduled for 1961 with Victoria de los Angeles and Franco Corelli as the principals. However, Corelli proved impossible to pin down. Then, with Gedda brought in as EMI’s all-repertoire house tenor, the apparently barren de los Angeles fell pregnant – only to do so again come the final rescheduling in 1963.

This was Freni’s chance: ‘She had already made well-received debuts at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden...and the sessions proceeded without a hitch, in Olof’s exquisitely crafted, beautifully detailed stereo production. The set...met with considerable acclaim, most of it occasioned by Freni’s meltingly lovely, vernal Mimì’.