Album available // Puccini: La Bohème by Sir Thomas Beecham 🎧 Qobuz (Hi-Res) bit.ly/3vvfowI Tidal (Hi-Res) bit.ly/3z9xCnm 🎧 Deezer (Hi-Fi) bit.ly/3x0llPj Amazon Music (Hi-Res) amzn.to/3RYDQye 🎧 Napster (Hi-Fi) bit.ly/3HlLtKc Spotify (mp3) spoti.fi/3O6DUL3 🎧 TH-cam Music (mp4) bit.ly/3HlLBcE Soundcloud (aac) bit.ly/3m6JZJ3 🎧 Apple Music (Lossless) - Idagio (Hi-Fi) - 🎧 Pandora, Anghami, QQ音乐, LineMusic 日本… Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) - La Bohème by Sir Thomas Beecham / Remastered. Click to activate the English subtitles for introduction to the opera (00:00-04:20) **Complete list of tracks on youtube music and the main streaming music platforms.** 00:00 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 - Questo Mar Rosso 09:29 Si può? Chi è là? - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 15:54 Non sono in vena; Scusi - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 20:30 Che gelida manina - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 25:30 Si. Mi chiamano Mimì - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 31:25 O soave fanciulla - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 35:36 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 2 - Aranci, datteri! 41:49 Viva Parpignol! - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 2 47:20 Quando me'n vo'soletta - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 2 54:06 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3 - Ohè, là, le guardie; Aprite! 59:14 Mimì?! Speravo di trovarvi qui - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3 1:07:11 Mimì è tanto malata! - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3 1:10:30 Addio; Donde lieta uscì al tuo grido - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3 1:37:47 Dunque è proprio finita! - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3 1:19:08 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4 - ln un coupè? 1:20:33 O Mimì, tu più non torni - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4 1:27:39 C’è Mimì ...C'è Mimì - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4 1:36:28 Sono andati? Fingevo di dormire - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4 1:43:05 Dorme? Riposa - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4 **Complete list of tracks on youtube music and the main streaming music platforms.** Rodolfo: Jussi Björling Mimì: Victoria de los Ángeles Marcello: Robert Merrill Schaunard: John Reardon Colline: Giorgio Tozzi Benoit & Alcindoro: Fernando Corena Musetta: Lucine Amara Parpignol: William Nahr Un doganiere: Thomas Powell Sergente: George del Monte R.C.A. Victor Orchestra and Chorus Chorus Director: Thomas Martin The Columbus Boychoir Director: Herbert Huffman Conductor: Sir THOMAS BEECHAM Recorded in 1956 New mastering in 2022 by AB for CMRR ❤ Join us with your phone on our WhatsApp fanpage (our latest album preview): bit.ly/3Mraw1r 🔊 Discover our new website: www.classicalmusicreference.com/ 🔊 Download CMRR's recordings in High fidelity audio (QOBUZ): bit.ly/370zcMg 🔊 Follow us on Spotify: spoti.fi/3016eVr ❤ If you like CMRR content, please consider membership at our Patreon or Tipeee page. Thank you :) www.patreon.com/cmrr // en.tipeee.com/cmrr By the time he made this recording of La Bohème very near the end of his career, Sir Thomas Beecham claimed to have conducted the opera ove 300 times. In am interview he gave to Irving Kolodin at the time, he said that he was all the more delighted to record the piece in New York, when « I thought I had had my last go at it! » He went on to explain that "What I have done reflects Puccini's desires about this Score as of 1920" - some 25 years after the premiere. He added: 'In the intervening time Puccini had heard Bohème innumerable times. He had a positive mania for going about and hearing his own operas, whether they were played in a town twenty miles away in Italy or in England a thousand miles off. "Puccini had come to London in 1920. We were doing the first performance at Covent Garden of Il Trittico, and Puccini came over to - so he thought - 'supervise' the production. It was then I had the chance to go over the score of Bohème with him in very close detail. I was particularly acquainted with it then, because we played it all the time with my English Opera Company in the provinces. "There are many places in which the performing directions are simply not explicit enough, or even contradictory. You have a crescendo in a certain bar and nothing after it to indicate where the descrescendo occurs. You have dynamic markings in one part of an ensemble, but not in another. In almost every instance Puccini confirmed my impression, gathered through many performances of Bohème, that something was lacking in one respect here, or incomplete there. So what I have undertaken to do in this recording represents - as Puccini indicated in my own score - his views of this earlier work not many years before he died." What Beecham did not mention there - though one has to assume that it equally reflects his discussions with the composer - is that his speeds are almost always markedly slower than those of Toscanini, who at that time, as by far the greatest Italian conductor of the day and the conductor of Bohème at its Turin premiere in 1896, tended to be counted authoritative in his views. Over the years since Beecham made this recording, not long after Toscanini had made his at a live concert performance, also in New York, the views of Beecham on tempi in this opera are the ones that have tended to prevail, and understandably so. The music itself blossoms the more. Not that Beecham's personal relationship with Puccini was a happy one. "l never liked him too well," he said to Irving Kolodin, "but we managed" He had first met him in Italy in 1904 thanks to Puccini's librettist, Luigi Illica, who had also supplied Beecham with the words for an opera he was writing on the subject of Christopher Marlowe. Illica in advance in a letter to Puccini talked of "Signor Tom Beecham, a little Englishman with a nervous facial twitch and a chronic sniff". Puccini was not at all interested to hear about Beecham's opera on Marlowe, occupied as he was at the time with revising Butterfly in collaboration with Illica. The composer seems not even to have been civil. He was just bored with the visitor but much more interested in Beecham's young American wife, Utica. Beecham did not like Puccini either, but when they met again in London in 1920, the conductor, as a firmly established figure, by then one of the great characters of the musical world, was in a very different position. Though Beecham did not himself conduct the triple bill of Il Trittico at Covent Garden, he took part in the discussions on the Covent Garden production as artistic director of the opera company. There was an argument over the sets for the central panel of the triptych, Suor Angelica, and Puccini refused to budge, even though the set he insisted on prevented the audience from seeing the full action. Whether or not for that reason Suor Angelica was not a success next to the other two one-act operas, Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi. Ever the autocrat, Beecham ordered Suor Angelica to be dropped for four performances, and replaced with a ballet. Puccini was furious, and promptly gave Beecham the nickname -with the Beecham family's patent medicine business plainly in mind - "the Purge". After that it may be a wonder that Beecham conducted this opera with such love. But the music was his concern, and he never stinted his praise for the mastery of the opera, as he said to Kolodin "one of the most skilfully orchestrated scores we have" , going on to explain in detail just why. That deep and detailed understanding helps to explain how in those hard-pressed New York sessions in the spring of 1956, the experience of a lifetime came to be caught on record in all its magic. Click to activate the English subtitles for introduction to the opera (00:00-04:20) Giacomo Puccini & Vincenzo Bellini PLAYLIST (reference recordings): th-cam.com/play/PL3UZpQL9LIxNh-7OZfzx5gWWU5rbFpmcH.html
Björling's voice sound so clear like if he's alive with us today, Victoria de los Angeles was a great cast choice for Mimi so as Björling as Rodolfo, one of the best duos of all the performances of this work. One of the best and most absolute reference recordings of La Bohéme, especially knowing that the conductor Thomas Beecham (one of my favorites) actually knew Puccini in person, even if both they weren't good friends as the description says.
So glad to have found this wonderful recording. Thank you! Bjorling and de Los Angeles, two voices that cannot compare with today' singers. A recording to treasure.
In 1976 a girlfriend bought me a cassette tape with highlights of this precise opera. It was my first experience of opera of any kind, and remains the best version of the opera that I have ever heard, having seen two live performances at Covent Garden, listened and watched numerous others over the years. It is a whole level above, in my opinion. Now I am familiar with over 200 operas.
@@johnpickford4222 Anna Netrebko is a very good singer. But where you answered my challenge with the same name three times, I can point back to the time of Beecham's recording and say Bjorling, Victoria de LA, Callas, Sutherland, Warren, Bastianini, Di Stefano, Gedda, & Milanov as singers, singing at that same time, whose artistry is as good or better than Anna Netrebko. I know that's probably not what you're getting at though. Do you think Netrebko sings with the same quality now as Victoria de Los Angeles did then?
@@Revener666Netrebko is one of the best sopranos nowadays a super voice . I like her very much .this recording is exceptional . Victoria de los angeles is really Mimí, it seems Puccini was thinking of her when he wrote mi chiamano Mimí ,❤ I love also Mirella Freni and Maria Chiara , so many great singers those years . Anyway now we have great sopranos too 😉👍
I am listening to this immortal recording today in memory of my beloved wife, on her birthday. We shed many a tear together enjoying this most romantic of all operas sung by the best voices for the story - Bjorling and De Los Angeles, superbly supported by Beecham and a great cast. It would be the first recording I would like to have with me if stranded on a desert island.
Lebhafte und wunderschöne Interpretation dieser spätromantischen und perfekt komponierten Oper mit herrlichen Stimmen aller genialen Solisten, gut harmonisierten Stimmen des ausgezeichneten Chors sowie gut vereinigten und perfekt entsprechenden Tönen aller Instrumente. Der unvergleichliche Dirigent leitet das perfekt trainierte Orchester in verschiedenen Tempi und mit dramatischer Dynamik. Die verbesserte Tonqualität ist auch erstaunlich hoch als eine Originalaufnahme von sechsundsechzig Jahren vor. Wunderbar und atemberaubend zugleich!
I credit Beecham with that wonderful end of Act I, with the voices shimmering in the stairway rather than sounding like two fishwives trying to outshout each other. Heavenly.
Q bueno q está esto Mauricio !!!!!!!! Cuanta razón tuvo Thomas Alva Edison q, refiriéndose a la Ópera "La Bohéme" escribió el mensaje: "Giacomo Puccini. Los hombres mueren y los gobiernos cambian, pero los cantos de La Bohéme vivirán para siempre "
AFFITTO!!!!.......CORENA......THE ONE AND ONLY......GIVER OF DELIGHT TO COUNTLESS PERFORMANCES AND EVEN MORE COUNTLESS PEOPLE. THE ABILITY THROUGH A GREAT SOUL AND A GREAT TECHNIQUE AND AN EVEN GREATER ...BEAUTIFUL VOICE...WE HAVE ALL HAD OUR LIVES MADE BETTER BY HIS CONTRIBUTIONS.
Thank you for the upload! Even among the poor of Italy, the melodies of most operas were known and sung. Americans aren't anywhere near that level of culture and intelligence.
@ursulapainter5307: Italians should be more familiar with the works of their greatest composer, especially one whose records helped popularize his music. That Americans aren’t familiar with Italian is also the result of little or no music education, no classical played in the house or piano instruction and absolutely no government support of the arts. But don’t say that the Italians are perfect.
che gelida manina, followed by mi chiamano Mimi, followed immediately by O Soave Fanciulla ... when I watched this live for the first time at a Lyric Opera of Chicago production, the effect of having these arias sung one after another was electric. brought the house down at the beginning of the Opera! this is such a wonderful example of verismo from the turn of the century. still my favorite opera, full of flesh and blood REAL people that I could relate to without problem.
One hit after after another hit, that's Puccini hability to write music, his arias are just so memorable that some of us even without knowing italian, tried to sing along, humming and even whistle, mixed with the soken dialogue, showing that not everything in opera is just singing. You just described what I love about verismo, early 20th century, music works that came along with changes like light bulb, cars and even cinema (forms of entertainment not so different actually), there could be stagings of these operas set at the time they were premiere, real people from middle class cities with normal and tragic lives like all of us, probably this why Puccini operas are so introductory and popular even to people who are unfamiliar with opera in general.
By the time he made this recording of La Bohème very near the end of his career, Sir Thomas Beecham claimed to have conducted the opera ove 300 times. In am interview he gave to Irving Kolodin at the time, he said that he was all the more delighted to record the piece in New York, when « I thought I had had my last go at it! » He went on to explain that "What I have done reflects Puccini's desires about this Score as of 1920" - some 25 years after the premiere. He added: 'In the intervening time Puccini had heard Bohème innumerable times. He had a positive mania for going about and hearing his own operas, whether they were played in a town twenty miles away in Italy or in England a thousand miles off. "Puccini had come to London in 1920. We were doing the first performance at Covent Garden of Il Trittico, and Puccini came over to - so he thought - 'supervise' the production. It was then I had the chance to go over the score of Bohème with him in very close detail. I was particularly acquainted with it then, because we played it all the time with my English Opera Company in the provinces. "There are many places in which the performing directions are simply not explicit enough, or even contradictory. You have a crescendo in a certain bar and nothing after it to indicate where the descrescendo occurs. You have dynamic markings in one part of an ensemble, but not in another. In almost every instance Puccini confirmed my impression, gathered through many performances of Bohème, that something was lacking in one respect here, or incomplete there. So what I have undertaken to do in this recording represents - as Puccini indicated in my own score - his views of this earlier work not many years before he died." What Beecham did not mention there - though one has to assume that it equally reflects his discussions with the composer - is that his speeds are almost always markedly slower than those of Toscanini, who at that time, as by far the greatest Italian conductor of the day and the conductor of Bohème at its Turin premiere in 1896, tended to be counted authoritative in his views. Over the years since Beecham made this recording, not long after Toscanini had made his at a live concert performance, also in New York, the views of Beecham on tempi in this opera are the ones that have tended to prevail, and understandably so. The music itself blossoms the more. Not that Beecham's personal relationship with Puccini was a happy one. "l never liked him too well," he said to Irving Kolodin, "but we managed" He had first met him in Italy in 1904 thanks to Puccini's librettist, Luigi Illica, who had also supplied Beecham with the words for an opera he was writing on the subject of Christopher Marlowe. Illica in advance in a letter to Puccini talked of "Signor Tom Beecham, a little Englishman with a nervous facial twitch and a chronic sniff". Puccini was not at all interested to hear about Beecham's opera on Marlowe, occupied as he was at the time with revising Butterfly in collaboration with Illica. The composer seems not even to have been civil. He was just bored with the visitor but much more interested in Beecham's young American wife, Utica. Beecham did not like Puccini either, but when they met again in London in 1920, the conductor, as a firmly established figure, by then one of the great characters of the musical world, was in a very different position. Though Beecham did not himself conduct the triple bill of Il Trittico at Covent Garden, he took part in the discussions on the Covent Garden production as artistic director of the opera company. There was an argument over the sets for the central panel of the triptych, Suor Angelica, and Puccini refused to budge, even though the set he insisted on prevented the audience from seeing the full action. Whether or not for that reason Suor Angelica was not a success next to the other two one-act operas, Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi. Ever the autocrat, Beecham ordered Suor Angelica to be dropped for four performances, and replaced with a ballet. Puccini was furious, and promptly gave Beecham the nickname -with the Beecham family's patent medicine business plainly in mind - "the Purge". After that it may be a wonder that Beecham conducted this opera with such love. But the music was his concern, and he never stinted his praise for the mastery of the opera, as he said to Kolodin "one of the most skilfully orchestrated scores we have" , going on to explain in detail just why. That deep and detailed understanding helps to explain how in those hard-pressed New York sessions in the spring of 1956, the experience of a lifetime came to be caught on record in all its magic. Click to activate the English subtitles for introduction to the opera (00:00-04:20) 🔊 FOLLOW US on SPOTIFY (Profil: CMRR) : spoti.fi/3016eVr 🔊 Download CMRR's recordings in High fidelity audio (QOBUZ) : bit.ly/370zcMg ❤ If you like CM//RR content, please consider membership at our Patreon page. Thank you :) www.patreon.com/cmrr
It dates from 1956 and was a last minute project. There is only so much that can be done with mono recordings to make them sound light modern digital ones. Also, unless each take is reviewed against the production notes and a restoration and rebalancing done then the remastering will not be totally successful. The Callas/DiStefano, Tebaldi/Bergonzi stereo, Freni/Pavarotti and selected performances on other recordings are excellent.
Registrazione considerata tutti ora tra le massime vette, Bjorling,Merrill De Los Angeles al top, fu ristampata tra le edizioni del secolo dalla Voce del Padrone, ha forse il più bel " O Mimi tu più torni" mai inciso, da raccomandarsi quale punto di confronto per il canto, sulla orchestrazione sono francamente portato a preferire quella di Karajan, ma il mio è un parere personale
Now 80yo. Listening to both since 50s/60s. . Always thought that they were primo. Preferred Victoria to Callas. More depth/resonance/colourance. PS . Correct me at your peril.
Indeed a great tragedy for both lovers, to have traded their companionship for the advantages -- if any -- of wealth. What is more precious than your love for another? Or, the reciprocity that love creates.
Lucine Amara sings Musetta. My familiarity with her stems from a recording of Pagliacci where she sang Nedda in a cast also starring Franco Corelli and Tito Gobbi.
Such an overrated recording. Very dull performance. You can't beat the Serafin recording with Tebaldi and Bergonzi. True Italian voices are at their peak with a fabulous supporting cast.
Mich bereichert fast jede der unterschiedlichen Aufnahmen. Der fast einzigartige jugendliche Klang der Stimme von Jussi Björling machte nicht nur diese Boheme sondern auch die vielgerühmte Aida neben Zinka Milanov zu fast realistischen ("Hör-") Erlebnissen.
Zugegeben, die klangliche Zusammensetzung der Stimmen unter Tullio Serafin ist phantastisch, die Mimi der Maria Callas begehrt gegen den unweigerlichen Tod auf. Victoria de los Angeles verkörpert vielleicht das unerfahrene, "unschuldige" Mädchen.
Album available // Puccini: La Bohème by Sir Thomas Beecham
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Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) - La Bohème by Sir Thomas Beecham / Remastered.
Click to activate the English subtitles for introduction to the opera (00:00-04:20)
**Complete list of tracks on youtube music and the main streaming music platforms.**
00:00 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1 - Questo Mar Rosso
09:29 Si può? Chi è là? - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1
15:54 Non sono in vena; Scusi - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1
20:30 Che gelida manina - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1
25:30 Si. Mi chiamano Mimì - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1
31:25 O soave fanciulla - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 1
35:36 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 2 - Aranci, datteri!
41:49 Viva Parpignol! - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 2
47:20 Quando me'n vo'soletta - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 2
54:06 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3 - Ohè, là, le guardie; Aprite!
59:14 Mimì?! Speravo di trovarvi qui - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3
1:07:11 Mimì è tanto malata! - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3
1:10:30 Addio; Donde lieta uscì al tuo grido - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3
1:37:47 Dunque è proprio finita! - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 3
1:19:08 Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4 - ln un coupè?
1:20:33 O Mimì, tu più non torni - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4
1:27:39 C’è Mimì ...C'è Mimì - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4
1:36:28 Sono andati? Fingevo di dormire - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4
1:43:05 Dorme? Riposa - Puccini: La Bohème, Act 4
**Complete list of tracks on youtube music and the main streaming music platforms.**
Rodolfo: Jussi Björling
Mimì: Victoria de los Ángeles
Marcello: Robert Merrill
Schaunard: John Reardon
Colline: Giorgio Tozzi
Benoit & Alcindoro: Fernando Corena
Musetta: Lucine Amara
Parpignol: William Nahr
Un doganiere: Thomas Powell
Sergente: George del Monte
R.C.A. Victor Orchestra and Chorus
Chorus Director: Thomas Martin
The Columbus Boychoir
Director: Herbert Huffman
Conductor: Sir THOMAS BEECHAM
Recorded in 1956
New mastering in 2022 by AB for CMRR
❤ Join us with your phone on our WhatsApp fanpage (our latest album preview): bit.ly/3Mraw1r
🔊 Discover our new website: www.classicalmusicreference.com/
🔊 Download CMRR's recordings in High fidelity audio (QOBUZ): bit.ly/370zcMg
🔊 Follow us on Spotify: spoti.fi/3016eVr
❤ If you like CMRR content, please consider membership at our Patreon or Tipeee page.
Thank you :) www.patreon.com/cmrr // en.tipeee.com/cmrr
By the time he made this recording of La Bohème very near the end of his career, Sir Thomas Beecham claimed to have conducted the opera ove 300 times. In am interview he gave to Irving Kolodin at the time, he said that he was all the more delighted to record the piece in New York, when « I thought I had had my last go at it! » He went on to explain that "What I have done reflects Puccini's desires about this Score as of 1920" - some 25 years after the premiere. He added: 'In the intervening time Puccini had heard Bohème innumerable times. He had a positive mania for going about and hearing his own operas, whether they were played in a town twenty miles away in Italy or in England a thousand miles off.
"Puccini had come to London in 1920. We were doing the first performance at Covent Garden of Il Trittico, and Puccini came over to - so he thought - 'supervise' the production. It was then I had the chance to go over the score of Bohème with him in very close detail. I was particularly acquainted with it then, because we played it all the time with my English Opera Company in the provinces.
"There are many places in which the performing directions are simply not explicit enough, or even contradictory. You have a crescendo in a certain bar and nothing after it to indicate where the descrescendo occurs. You have dynamic markings in one part of an ensemble, but not in another. In almost every instance Puccini confirmed my impression, gathered through many performances of Bohème, that something was lacking in one respect here, or incomplete there. So what I have undertaken to do in this recording represents - as Puccini indicated in my own score - his views of this earlier work not many years before he died."
What Beecham did not mention there - though one has to assume that it equally reflects his discussions with the composer - is that his speeds are almost always markedly slower than those of Toscanini, who at that time, as by far the greatest Italian conductor of the day and the conductor of Bohème at its Turin premiere in 1896, tended to be counted authoritative in his views. Over the years since Beecham made this recording, not long after Toscanini had made his at a live concert performance, also in New York, the views of Beecham on tempi in this opera are the ones that have tended to prevail, and understandably so. The music itself blossoms the more.
Not that Beecham's personal relationship with Puccini was a happy one. "l never liked him too well," he said to Irving Kolodin, "but we managed" He had first met him in Italy in 1904 thanks to Puccini's librettist, Luigi Illica, who had also supplied Beecham with the words for an opera he was writing on the subject of Christopher Marlowe. Illica in advance in a letter to Puccini talked of "Signor Tom Beecham, a little Englishman with a nervous facial twitch and a chronic sniff". Puccini was not at all interested to hear about Beecham's opera on Marlowe, occupied as he was at the time with revising Butterfly in collaboration with Illica. The composer seems not even to have been civil. He was just bored with the visitor but much more interested in Beecham's young American wife, Utica. Beecham did not like Puccini either, but when they met again in London in 1920, the conductor, as a firmly established figure, by then one of the great characters of the musical world, was in a very different position. Though Beecham did not himself conduct the triple bill of Il Trittico at Covent Garden, he took part in the discussions on the Covent Garden production as artistic director of the opera company. There was an argument over the sets for the central panel of the triptych, Suor Angelica, and Puccini refused to budge, even though the set he insisted on prevented the audience from seeing the full action. Whether or not for that reason Suor Angelica was not a success next to the other two one-act operas, Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi. Ever the autocrat, Beecham ordered Suor Angelica to be dropped for four performances, and replaced with a ballet. Puccini was furious, and promptly gave Beecham the nickname -with the Beecham family's patent medicine business plainly in mind - "the Purge".
After that it may be a wonder that Beecham conducted this opera with such love. But the music was his concern, and he never stinted his praise for the mastery of the opera, as he said to Kolodin "one of the most skilfully orchestrated scores we have" , going on to explain in detail just why. That deep and detailed understanding helps to explain how in those hard-pressed New York sessions in the spring of 1956, the experience of a lifetime came to be caught on record in all its magic.
Click to activate the English subtitles for introduction to the opera (00:00-04:20)
Giacomo Puccini & Vincenzo Bellini PLAYLIST (reference recordings): th-cam.com/play/PL3UZpQL9LIxNh-7OZfzx5gWWU5rbFpmcH.html
My first opera recording. I was in tears at the end of the first act. Bjorling blew my mind and still does.
First opera record I ever heard. Still the best. Bjorling and De Los Angeles are a match made in heaven. Merrill and Amara are ideal.
Björling's voice sound so clear like if he's alive with us today, Victoria de los Angeles was a great cast choice for Mimi so as Björling as Rodolfo, one of the best duos of all the performances of this work. One of the best and most absolute reference recordings of La Bohéme, especially knowing that the conductor Thomas Beecham (one of my favorites) actually knew Puccini in person, even if both they weren't good friends as the description says.
So glad to have found this wonderful recording. Thank you! Bjorling and de Los Angeles, two voices that cannot compare with today' singers. A recording to treasure.
Never mind Beecham. Just Listen. Del Los Angeles, and Bjorling,
In 1976 a girlfriend bought me a cassette tape with highlights of this precise opera. It was my first experience of opera of any kind, and remains the best version of the opera that I have ever heard, having seen two live performances at Covent Garden, listened and watched numerous others over the years. It is a whole level above, in my opinion. Now I am familiar with over 200 operas.
@oddviews: To hell with the 200 operas, what happened to the girlfriend?
Great story!
If these voices were around today, nobody would believe it
@bordaz1: Whadda ya mean? Netrebko, Netrebko and Netrebko!!!
@@johnpickford4222 Anna Netrebko is a very good singer. But where you answered my challenge with the same name three times, I can point back to the time of Beecham's recording and say Bjorling, Victoria de LA, Callas, Sutherland, Warren, Bastianini, Di Stefano, Gedda, & Milanov as singers, singing at that same time, whose artistry is as good or better than Anna Netrebko. I know that's probably not what you're getting at though. Do you think Netrebko sings with the same quality now as Victoria de Los Angeles did then?
They are
@@johnpickford4222 Netrebko is sloppy and needs a strict voice coach and she would be great.
@@Revener666Netrebko is one of the best sopranos nowadays a super voice . I like her very much .this recording is exceptional . Victoria de los angeles is really Mimí, it seems Puccini was thinking of her when he wrote mi chiamano Mimí ,❤ I love also Mirella Freni and Maria Chiara , so many great singers those years . Anyway now we have great sopranos too 😉👍
The best recorded version of Boheme: Taut, beautifully sung and the pairing of Bjorling and de los Angeles bring tears every time.
Bravísima Victoria!!!!❤
This is my absolute favorite recording of Boheme 💜💜
I love Jussi and Victoria so much, and they just shine in this!!
I am listening to this immortal recording today in memory of my beloved wife, on her birthday. We shed many a tear together enjoying this most romantic of all operas sung by the best voices for the story - Bjorling and De Los Angeles, superbly supported by Beecham and a great cast. It would be the first recording I would like to have with me if stranded on a desert island.
Thanks for your message!
OMG, the sound is glorious! Possibly the most perfect recording of this opera. Thanks for posting it.
I bought these LPs in my mid-teens, when they were first issued. It took 4 weeks to save up for each disc!
❤️😊
Paper routes didn't pay much.
Lebhafte und wunderschöne Interpretation dieser spätromantischen und perfekt komponierten Oper mit herrlichen Stimmen aller genialen Solisten, gut harmonisierten Stimmen des ausgezeichneten Chors sowie gut vereinigten und perfekt entsprechenden Tönen aller Instrumente. Der unvergleichliche Dirigent leitet das perfekt trainierte Orchester in verschiedenen Tempi und mit dramatischer Dynamik. Die verbesserte Tonqualität ist auch erstaunlich hoch als eine Originalaufnahme von sechsundsechzig Jahren vor. Wunderbar und atemberaubend zugleich!
JUSSI makes me cry .....
Me too. Every time. But knowing of his chronic depression makes me wonder why he wasn't enamoured of his voice as so many us us are. Tears every time.
Thank you...what a superb rendition!
Omg 35:32 the 2nd Act is like pure Heaven... No one can be sad during the 2nd Act!
A true treasure. Thank you!
Sublime !!!!
La piu' bella opera di tutti i tempi ,e la coppia di una bravura ineguagliabile ,che Dio li benedica assieme a Puccini ,Giacosa e illaca !😍😍😍
In my opinion, Beecham's greatest effort
Especially because Beecham met Puccini even though they didn't get along.
I credit Beecham with that wonderful end of Act I, with the voices shimmering in the stairway rather than sounding like two fishwives trying to outshout each other.
Heavenly.
By far, the best recording ever. Patricia McFadden
It’s unique. Thank you for sharing this recording.
Tears-jerking
Q bueno q está esto Mauricio !!!!!!!! Cuanta razón tuvo Thomas Alva Edison q, refiriéndose a la Ópera "La Bohéme" escribió el mensaje: "Giacomo Puccini. Los hombres mueren y los gobiernos cambian, pero los cantos de La Bohéme vivirán para siempre "
Una de las mejores versiones grabadas...no se puede hoy en dia igualar
AFFITTO!!!!.......CORENA......THE ONE AND ONLY......GIVER OF DELIGHT TO COUNTLESS PERFORMANCES AND EVEN MORE COUNTLESS PEOPLE.
THE ABILITY THROUGH A GREAT SOUL AND A GREAT TECHNIQUE AND AN EVEN GREATER ...BEAUTIFUL VOICE...WE HAVE ALL HAD OUR LIVES MADE BETTER BY HIS CONTRIBUTIONS.
Talvez o melhor tenor entre tantos outros. Conforme a Opera.
Thank you for the upload! Even among the poor of Italy, the melodies of most operas were known and sung. Americans aren't anywhere near that level of culture and intelligence.
@ursulapainter5307: Italians should be more familiar with the works of their greatest composer, especially one whose records helped popularize his music. That Americans aren’t familiar with Italian is also the result of little or no music education, no classical played in the house or piano instruction and absolutely no government support of the arts. But don’t say that the Italians are perfect.
che gelida manina, followed by mi chiamano Mimi, followed immediately by O Soave Fanciulla ...
when I watched this live for the first time at a Lyric Opera of Chicago production, the effect of having these arias sung one after another was electric. brought the house down at the beginning of the Opera!
this is such a wonderful example of verismo from the turn of the century. still my favorite opera, full of flesh and blood REAL people that I could relate to without problem.
One hit after after another hit, that's Puccini hability to write music, his arias are just so memorable that some of us even without knowing italian, tried to sing along, humming and even whistle, mixed with the soken dialogue, showing that not everything in opera is just singing. You just described what I love about verismo, early 20th century, music works that came along with changes like light bulb, cars and even cinema (forms of entertainment not so different actually), there could be stagings of these operas set at the time they were premiere, real people from middle class cities with normal and tragic lives like all of us, probably this why Puccini operas are so introductory and popular even to people who are unfamiliar with opera in general.
@VCT3333: We’ll that’s how it’s written.
By the time he made this recording of La Bohème very near the end of his career, Sir Thomas Beecham claimed to have conducted the opera ove 300 times. In am interview he gave to Irving Kolodin at the time, he said that he was all the more delighted to record the piece in New York, when « I thought I had had my last go at it! » He went on to explain that "What I have done reflects Puccini's desires about this Score as of 1920" - some 25 years after the premiere. He added: 'In the intervening time Puccini had heard Bohème innumerable times. He had a positive mania for going about and hearing his own operas, whether they were played in a town twenty miles away in Italy or in England a thousand miles off.
"Puccini had come to London in 1920. We were doing the first performance at Covent Garden of Il Trittico, and Puccini came over to - so he thought - 'supervise' the production. It was then I had the chance to go over the score of Bohème with him in very close detail. I was particularly acquainted with it then, because we played it all the time with my English Opera Company in the provinces.
"There are many places in which the performing directions are simply not explicit enough, or even contradictory. You have a crescendo in a certain bar and nothing after it to indicate where the descrescendo occurs. You have dynamic markings in one part of an ensemble, but not in another. In almost every instance Puccini confirmed my impression, gathered through many performances of Bohème, that something was lacking in one respect here, or incomplete there. So what I have undertaken to do in this recording represents - as Puccini indicated in my own score - his views of this earlier work not many years before he died."
What Beecham did not mention there - though one has to assume that it equally reflects his discussions with the composer - is that his speeds are almost always markedly slower than those of Toscanini, who at that time, as by far the greatest Italian conductor of the day and the conductor of Bohème at its Turin premiere in 1896, tended to be counted authoritative in his views. Over the years since Beecham made this recording, not long after Toscanini had made his at a live concert performance, also in New York, the views of Beecham on tempi in this opera are the ones that have tended to prevail, and understandably so. The music itself blossoms the more.
Not that Beecham's personal relationship with Puccini was a happy one. "l never liked him too well," he said to Irving Kolodin, "but we managed" He had first met him in Italy in 1904 thanks to Puccini's librettist, Luigi Illica, who had also supplied Beecham with the words for an opera he was writing on the subject of Christopher Marlowe. Illica in advance in a letter to Puccini talked of "Signor Tom Beecham, a little Englishman with a nervous facial twitch and a chronic sniff". Puccini was not at all interested to hear about Beecham's opera on Marlowe, occupied as he was at the time with revising Butterfly in collaboration with Illica. The composer seems not even to have been civil. He was just bored with the visitor but much more interested in Beecham's young American wife, Utica. Beecham did not like Puccini either, but when they met again in London in 1920, the conductor, as a firmly established figure, by then one of the great characters of the musical world, was in a very different position. Though Beecham did not himself conduct the triple bill of Il Trittico at Covent Garden, he took part in the discussions on the Covent Garden production as artistic director of the opera company. There was an argument over the sets for the central panel of the triptych, Suor Angelica, and Puccini refused to budge, even though the set he insisted on prevented the audience from seeing the full action. Whether or not for that reason Suor Angelica was not a success next to the other two one-act operas, Il tabarro and Gianni Schicchi. Ever the autocrat, Beecham ordered Suor Angelica to be dropped for four performances, and replaced with a ballet. Puccini was furious, and promptly gave Beecham the nickname -with the Beecham family's patent medicine business plainly in mind - "the Purge".
After that it may be a wonder that Beecham conducted this opera with such love. But the music was his concern, and he never stinted his praise for the mastery of the opera, as he said to Kolodin "one of the most skilfully orchestrated scores we have" , going on to explain in detail just why. That deep and detailed understanding helps to explain how in those hard-pressed New York sessions in the spring of 1956, the experience of a lifetime came to be caught on record in all its magic.
Click to activate the English subtitles for introduction to the opera (00:00-04:20)
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Thanks so much. These stories behind the scenes only enrich the experience of enjoying this masterpiece.
Very old but sounds very good.
It dates from 1956 and was a last minute project. There is only so much that can be done with mono recordings to make them sound light modern digital ones. Also, unless each take is reviewed against the production notes and a restoration and rebalancing done then the remastering will not be totally successful. The Callas/DiStefano, Tebaldi/Bergonzi stereo, Freni/Pavarotti and selected performances on other recordings are excellent.
@@johnpickford4222 Thanks!
Registrazione considerata tutti ora tra le massime vette, Bjorling,Merrill De Los Angeles al top, fu ristampata tra le edizioni del secolo dalla Voce del Padrone, ha forse il più bel " O Mimi tu più torni" mai inciso, da raccomandarsi quale punto di confronto per il canto, sulla orchestrazione sono francamente portato a preferire quella di Karajan, ma il mio è un parere personale
34:54 - 35:27 haunting but yet very beautiful
Indescribably beautiful.
🎭👏👏
Now 80yo. Listening to both since 50s/60s. . Always thought that they were primo. Preferred Victoria to Callas. More depth/resonance/colourance. PS . Correct me at your peril.
El primer disco que tuvo mi señora
The ads are killing me ughhhhh
Add app non-apps, viola! No apps.
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Indeed a great tragedy for both lovers, to have traded their companionship for the advantages -- if any -- of wealth. What is more precious than your love for another? Or, the reciprocity that love creates.
Hi. Can someone tell me what edition of the score was used for this recording?
🌞❤🌞
Fantastic recording, but who is singing Musetta?
Lucine Amara sings Musetta. My familiarity with her stems from a recording of Pagliacci where she sang Nedda in a cast also starring Franco Corelli and Tito Gobbi.
21//2.06.22.
59:44
34:14
31:26
Such an overrated recording. Very dull performance. You can't beat the Serafin recording with Tebaldi and Bergonzi. True Italian voices are at their peak with a fabulous supporting cast.
Mich bereichert fast jede der unterschiedlichen Aufnahmen. Der fast einzigartige jugendliche Klang der Stimme von Jussi Björling machte nicht nur diese Boheme sondern auch die vielgerühmte Aida neben Zinka Milanov zu fast realistischen ("Hör-") Erlebnissen.
Zugegeben, die klangliche Zusammensetzung der Stimmen unter Tullio Serafin ist phantastisch, die Mimi der Maria Callas begehrt gegen den unweigerlichen Tod auf. Victoria de los Angeles verkörpert vielleicht das unerfahrene, "unschuldige" Mädchen.
Mich erschreckt der weiterführende Gedanke, wo ich denn dann die Tonaufnahmen einer Mirella Freni einarbeiten darf!!!
What a beauty!!! Delightful !!! BRAVISE!!! Thank you from the bottom of my heart !!! All the best to you!!!👏👏👏
@ 14:50 omg So beautiful...
I've never heard a Rodolfo sing it like that before! ❤ How can this voice make me cry?
'Classical Music' dates, in his valuable, lengthy comment, this recording as 1956.
How do you find it?