by Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

A majestic cast comes together for Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic production of Puccini’s La Bohème.

Conductor Riccardo Frizza presides over a glorious vocal ensemble led by the mesmerising Angela Gheorghiu, who sings Mimì at the Met for the first time in six years, opposite golden-toned tenor Michael Fabiano as her lover, Rodolfo.

Gheorghiu’s voice, as delicate as a nightingale’s, is silky and suave. Her performance is of such delicacy that the way she embodies Mimì’s death will shed tears. On the other hand the character of Musetta, interpreted by Susanna Phillips’ plump full voice and histrionic stage presence consoles and distracts from the turmoil of the star-crossed lovers. On top of it all Fabiano’s volcanic timbre and elegant phrasing adds to the story’s primal cry of pleasure and pain.

The novel by Henri Murger, ‘Scènes de la vie de Bohème,’ adapted in music by the Italian composer, still today has the melancholic and empathic charm that embraces all the untraditional lifestyles of marginalised and impoverished writers, artists, actors, musicians and journalists. La Bohème is timeless and will make audiences actually feel. The financial struggle of Paris in 1830, does not differ from today’s current state of affairs, that affects making a living in the arts along with loving in absolute freedom.

The eternal wanderers, adventurers, vagabonds represent the ideal of the elective affinities: those like-minded people who draw close on the basis of their shared human passions, regardless of the practice of an unconventional lifestyle with few permanent ties. Thus is the magic of Puccini’s opera which shone once more at the Met this season.

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