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Chan 3008 book cover.qxd 15/10/07 10:38 am Page 1 Chan 3008(2) CHANDOS O PERA IN P u c c i n i ENGLISH La bohème David Parry PETE MOOES FOUNDATION CHAN 3008 BOOK.qxd 15/10/07 10:39 am Page 2 Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) La bohème (A Bohemian Life) Opera in four acts Libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica after Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème AKG English version by William Grist and Percy Pinkerton, with amendments by David Parry Marcello, a painter............................................................................................Alan Opie baritone Rodolfo, a poet ..............................................................................................Dennis O’Neill tenor Colline, a philosopher ........................................................................................Alastair Miles bass Schaunard, a musician ............................................................................William Dazeley baritone Benoit, the landlord ....................................................................................Andrew Shore baritone Mimì ......................................................................................................Cynthia Haymon soprano Parpignol, a toy-seller ....................................................................................Mark Milhofer tenor Musetta ................................................................................................Marie McLaughlin soprano Alcindoro, a state councillor ....................................................................................Andrew Shore A Hawker ................................................................................................................................Peter Hall tenor Customs Official ............................................................................................................Simon Preece baritone Customs Sergeant ......................................................................................................Paul Parfitt bass-baritone Giacomo Puccini Geoffrey Mitchell Choir The Peter Kay Children’s Choir Philharmonia Orchestra Brad Cohen assistant conductor David Parry conductor 3 CHAN 3008 BOOK.qxd 15/10/07 10:39 am Page 4 COMPACT DISC ONE 13 Rodolfo – ‘What is it?’ 3:18 [p. 71] Act I 35:26 [p. 54] (Rodolfo, Mimì, Colline, Schaunard, Marcello, Chorus) 14 1 Marcello – ‘This Red Sea Passage feels deep and chill to me’ 4:21 [p. 54] Children – ‘Long live Parpignol!’ 3:12 [p. 73] (Marcello, Rodolfo, Colline) (Chorus, Schaunard, Marcello, Colline, Rodolfo, Mimì, 2 Colline – ‘Profound and thoughtful!’ 1:21 [p. 56] Alcindoro, Musetta) (Colline, Marcello, Rodolfo) 15 Marcello – ‘You had better ask me’ 2:40 [p. 75] 3 Rodolfo – ‘Firewood!’ 3:48 [p. 57] (Marcello, Musetta, Alcindoro, Colline, Schaunard, Chorus, (Rodolfo, Marcello, Colline, Schaunard) Rodolfo, Mimì) 16 4 Benoit – ‘Hello’ 5:33 [p. 59] Musetta – ‘As thro’ the street I wander’ 5:04 [p. 76] (Benoit, Marcello, Schaunard, Colline, Rodolfo) (Musetta, Marcello, Alcindoro, Mimì, Rodolfo, Colline, 5 Rodolfo – ‘I’ll stay here, I must complete my article’ 1:00 [p. 63] Schaunard) (Rodolfo, Marcello, Colline, Schaunard) 17 Colline – ‘Who had him bring it?’ 2:17 [p. 79] 6 Rodolfo – ‘No inspiration’ 2:44 [p. 63] (Colline, Schaunard, Rodolfo, Marcello, Chorus, Musetta, Mimì,) (Rodolfo, Mimì) TT 54:57 [p. 57] 7 Mimì – ‘Oh! How dreadful!’ 1:40 [p. 65] (Mimì, Rodolfo) COMPACT DISC TWO 8 Rodolfo – ‘Your tiny hand is frozen!’ 4:40 [p. 66] Act III 26:11 [p. 57] (Rodolfo) 1 Scavengers – ‘Hallo! You soldiers! Admit us!’ 3:41 [p. 81] 9 Mimì – ‘Yes, I’m always called Mimì’ 5:17 [p. 66] (Chorus, Customs Official, Musetta) (Mimì, Rodolfo) 2 Mimì – ‘Oh, please sir, tell me, do you know the tavern’ 1:46 [p. 82] 10 Schaunard – ‘Hey! Rodolfo!’ 0:48 [p. 67] (Mimì, Customs Sergeant, Customs Official) (Schaunard, Colline, Marcello, Rodolfo, Mimì) 3 Marcello – ‘Mimì!’ – Mimì – ‘I hoped that I would find 11 Rodolfo – ‘Lovely maid in the moonlight’ 4:16 [p. 68] you here’ 4:57 [p. 83] (Rodolfo, Mimì) (Marcello, Mimì) 4 Rodolfo – ‘Marcello, you’re outside here’ 1:45 [p. 84] Act II 19:20 [p. 54] (Rodolfo, Marcello, Mimì) 12 Hawkers – ‘Come, buy my oranges!’ 2:48 [p. 69] 5 Rodolfo – ‘Mimì is fickle-hearted’ 1:25 [p. 84] (Chorus, Schaunard, Rodolfo, Mimì, Colline, Marcello) (Rodolfo, Marcello) 4 5 CHAN 3008 BOOK.qxd 15/10/07 10:39 am Page 6 6 Rodolfo – ‘Mimì’s so sickly, so ailing!’ 3:29 [p. 85] (Rodolfo, Marcello, Mimì) Giacomo Puccini: La bohème 7 Mimì – ‘To the home that she left’ 3:13 [p. 86] (Mimì) La bohème, we note, retains its French title even ‘Lovely maid in the moonlight’. It also had its 8 Rodolfo – ‘Then it really is over’ 5:55 [p. 86] when the Italian opera is sung in English. The share of contortions and contrivances, starting (Rodolfo, Mimì, Marcello, Musetta) Times’ critic reviewing the British premiere with the very first line: ‘This Red Sea Passage observed that a literal translation would be feeleth damp and chill to me’. The last Act IV 29:45 [p. 83] misleading because this was not really an opera complete sentence in the opera was also 9 Marcello – ‘In a coupé?’ 1:13 [p. 88] about Bohemia. The English vocal score was memorable in that old translation: ‘What’s the (Marcello, Rodolfo) entitled The Bohemians, and that, he suggested, meaning of these comings and goings, these 10 Rodolfo – ‘Oh Mimì, our love is over’ 5:47 [p. 89] would suit better. The reason for his thinking glances so strange?’ Remarkably, all these (Rodolfo, Marcello, Schaunard, Colline) along these lines lay no doubt in the fact that oddities of expression passed us by: we didn’t 11 Colline – ‘Gavotta’ 1:47 [p. 91] the performance had taken place not among really mind them, even grew rather fond of (Colline, Marcello, Rodolfo, Schaunard) the international crowd at London’s Covent them. Good, natural English would no doubt 12 Musetta – ‘It’s Mimì! It’s Mimì who is with me’ 6:04 [p. 92] Garden but in the Carl Rosa Company’s season have been preferable even so. (Musetta, Rodolfo, Schaunard, Mimì, Marcello) at the Theatre Royal in Manchester; and it had Whatever the textual shortcomings of that 13 Colline – ‘Venerable garment, listen’ 2:38 [p. 94] been given in English. first performance, the Manchester public loved (Colline, Schaunard) The critic did not object to that; he did it, and the night of 22 April 1897 made history. 14 Mimì – ‘Have they left us?’ 6:53 [p. 95] think, however, that it might have been given Next day (next day, note) Londoners could read (Mimì, Rodolfo, Schaunard) in rather better English. ‘Her food most of a resounding success. Puccini had ‘treated his 15 Musetta – ‘Sleeping?’ – Rodolfo – ‘Just resting’ 2:16 [p. 96] predilected is the heart’ was a sentence that subject with the delicacy, lightness, power and (Musetta, Rodolfo, Marcello, Mimì) took his fancy, and he had great fun with ‘And force of a master’, and ‘the performance was in 16 Rodolfo – ‘What did the doctor say?’ 2:58 [p. 97] I, Marcel, will not hide you’. He urged almost every respect a genuine triumph for all (Rodolfo, Marcello, Musetta, Schaunard, Colline) immediate and thorough revision, which was concerned’. Puccini, who had been very TT 56:03 [p. 83] probably carried out as the offending sentences downcast since his arrival in the city, cheered were not part of the translation which remained up. Tito Ricordi, the publisher, who was with in general use for the next half-century. That, of him (a great joker too, and able, apparently, to course, included such highlights as ‘Your tiny sing any part in the opera himself) was jubilant hand is frozen’, ‘They call me Mimì’ and that his idea of placing the premiere outside 6 7 CHAN 3008 BOOK.qxd 15/10/07 10:39 am Page 8 London had worked so well. And he was singing Rodolfo in a fresh, unmawkish masterpiece in itself, with its profusion of through with contrast, which bears the imprint probably right: when the opera came to Covent production by Sadler’s Wells, yet felt somehow melodic ideas (eight come to mind of the famous sentence in Henry Murger’s Garden it met with little interest and was soiled by it. immediately), the variety of its texture (solo and novel Scènes de la vie de bohème from which dismissed in the press as ‘not stimulating If this has changed, it is partly due to a choral passages, solo voices in ensemble, a single Puccini and his librettists took their enough to be heard often’. steadily growing appreciation of the score as a child’s voice or a voice from off-stage, off-stage inspiration: ‘A gay life but a terrible one’. The Its later success in the capital has been compound, its elements united with a skill that military band, full forces combined), the range Times’ critic took this up too, and quoted attributed to Nellie Melba’s advocacy and her engages the analytical mind and makes of the of its ‘language’ (the tenderness of lovers, the further from Murger. These ‘bohemians’, he lovely singing in the role of Mimì. That played work something quite different from the Christmas Eve excitement of the crowd, says, are people of extremes, both stoical and its part no doubt, especially with the comédie larmoyante perceived by its detractors. tantrums and expostulations, lilting charm and spendthrift, adapting to the changing winds of fashionable people at Covent Garden who Books such as Mosco Carner’s critical ecstatic rejuvenation). But all of that, and the fortune: might not have taken very enthusiastically to biography (1958) and (shorter but no less wonderful joinery of these many parts, is