Lyric Opera 2018-2019 Issue 7 La Boheme #2

conducted by the young Arturo Toscanini. The response was decidedly tepid. Such a flaccid reaction seems mind-boggling today. Perhaps Puccini’s music seemed a trifle dull, lacking both the pyrotechnical dazzle of the old repertory or the primal intensity of the new – particularly in the absence of a real aria d’urlo , a feature of verismo in which a character veers from lyricism and essentially begins to scream (though we have a suggestion of that from Rodolfo at Mimì’s death). In any case, this was not a matter of audience favor overriding critical dissent (Puccini would experience that later with Tosca ). This time around, the audience wasn’t crazy about it either. Bohème ’s ascension was to be fueled by its interpreters. Chief among these was the great Australian diva Nellie Melba. Dame Nellie was a huge star, both at the Met and particularly at Covent Garden, where she ruled with an iron fist. She was also a soprano in search of new material. Melba had built her reputation on such florid Italian roles — most prominently Donizetti's Lucia — and was also celebrated as Gounod's Juliet and Marguerite. Audience tastes had changed, however. Melba’s outing as Nedda in Pagliacci was well received, but an ill-advised attempt at Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Siegfried was a disaster. “I have been a fool,” Melba told the press, in a rare moment of humility. In truth, Melba was anything but. She knew she needed to evolve, and that the excesses of verismo were a poor fit for her vocally and temperamentally. But Puccini’s Mimì was something else. Here was a modern role that would allow her to exploit her preternaturally beautiful timbre and exquisitely floated upper tones. Melba plunged into six weeks of study in the role with Puccini himself. The composer declared her an ideal Mimì (an assessment informed, no doubt, by his awareness of Melba’s considerable influence with management – Puccini was no fool, either). Melba aggressively campaigned for Covent Garden to mount Bohème for her, which they did in 1899, despite their distaste for the “new and plebeian opera.” Her performance created a sensation. Soprano Mary Garden left a revealing account of Melba’s achievement, specifically the floated high C concluding “O soave fanciulla.” “The note came floating over the auditorium of Covent Garden; it left Melba's throat, it left Melba's body, it left everything, and came over like a star and passed us in our box, and went out into the infinite. I have never heard anything like it in my life, not from any other singer, ever. My God, how beautiful it was! That note of Melba's was just like a ball of light.” The Met capitulated as well, and Melba became their first Mimì in 1900, with the unusual caveat that she sing the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor following the opera, as a panacea for those who remained skeptical. Then there was Caruso. If there ever was a perfect match of composer and voice, it was Giacomo Puccini and Enrico Caruso. Caruso’s extraordinary tenor instrument, with its ringing, honeyed sweetness on top and surprising complement of beef in the middle register, was ideally served by Puccini’s music. It could have been written for him, and Caruso knew it. His appearances as Rodolfo opposite Melba at Covent Garden in 1902 caused pandemonium. The press also had a field day with an extra-musical event that occurred. As legend has it, Caruso, a notorious practical joker, pressed a hot sausage into Melba’s hand as he sang “Che gelida manina” (“Your little hand is frozen”). It was a juicy little story, and it kept the singers – and Bohème – firmly in the public consciousness. O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O January 10 - 31, 2019 | 27 Pictured as Rodolfo and Mimì are the two legendary singers who did the most to bring La bohème to world attention – Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba. (Above) Nearly a century after the heyday of Melba and Caruso, La bohème was essential to one of the most successful films of the 1980s, Moonstruck . In a crucial scene, Loretta (Cher) attends a Metropolitan Opera performance of Bohème with opera-loving Ronny (Nicolas Cage), her fiancé’s brother, who’s fallen in love with her. Country singer Gary Morris played Rodolfo and Linda Ronstadt was Mimì in the New York Shakespeare Theater’s 1984 English-language production of La bohème . METROPOLITAN OPERA ARCHIVES