[Met Performance] CID:167860
La Bohème {509} Metropolitan Opera House: 02/3/1955.
(Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
February 3, 1955
LA BOHÈME {509}
Mimì....................Lucine Amara
Rodolfo.................Giuseppe Campora
Musetta.................Jean Fenn
Marcello................Frank Valentino
Schaunard...............Clifford Harvuot
Colline.................Norman Scott
Benoit..................Lawrence Davidson
Alcindoro...............Alessio De Paolis
Parpignol...............James McCracken
Sergeant................Calvin Marsh
Conductor...............Fausto Cleva
Review of Francis D. Perkins in the Herald Tribune
Puccini's "La Bohème," which had its first hearing of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House two weeks before, was repeated there Thursday with three different principals in the cast. Lucine Amara's Mimi was an admirable characterization; her range of vocal color was a counterpart of the emotional gamut of the role, and her singing conveyed a particularly poignant pathos in the third act. With vocal musicianship, vocal volume was well employed for the desired dramatic ends, despite a hardness of timbre in some of the outspoken top notes of her appealing voice. Frank Valentino was an effective Marcello in normal vocal form, and Norman. Scott fared commendably as Colline.
Giuseppe Campora. reappearing Rodolfo, sang with very likeable and generally fluent and well produced tones in a performance which carried more conviction than before. Jean Fenn's Musetta, vivid in color and to the eye in the second act, was also appropriately vivid in vocal hue in her spirited interpretation in that scene. Clifford Harvuot was again the Schaunard, with Lawrence Davidson, Alessio De Paolis, James McCracken and Calvin Marsh in other roles; Fausto Cleva conducted.