Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Puccini

Puccini’s Bohemian Christmas

Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La bohème” opens in an artist’s garret on Christmas Eve. After Mimi and Rodolfo meet cute (she knocks on his door looking for a match for her candle), they join their friends on the boisterous streets of Paris for a good old-fashioned Latin Quarter Christmas. This effectively knocks out the first two acts.

By Act III, their love is on the rocks. On a snowy night, Rodolfo confides to the painter Marcello that Mimi is slowly dying of consumption (tuberculosis). He loves her still, but he doesn’t have the money to take care of her, so he is feigning jealousy in an attempt to drive her into the arms of another. Mimi overhears, and apparently agrees to the split, but then the lovers decide it’s too horrible to part in winter. We know it’s just an excuse, though, so that they can stay together until spring.

In Act IV, we have no idea what month it is, but it’s sometime later. Mimi shows up at the garret, and she is not well. The circle of bohemians offer comfort, each in their own way. Earrings are sold for a muff, and an overcoat is hocked for medicine. Left to themselves, Mimi and Rodolfo relive their past happiness, but the reunion is agonizingly brief. Their friends return, only just in time for everyone to dissolve into tears.

Merry Christmas.

————-

On Puccini’s birthday, here’s a recording of André Kostelanetz (also born on this date) conducting a purely orchestral suite of highlights from “La bohème”:

Mimi’s hands are cold, so Rodolfo goes to work. The old smoothie.

Franco Zeffirelli filmed production of the complete opera, with Adriana Martino turning up the heat in Act II as flirty Musetta.

December 22, 2025
Angel Blue Kicks Off Princeton Festival 2024

Last season, when soprano Pretty Yende had to cancel her appearances with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra due to illness, Angel Blue stepped up at the eleventh hour to deliver possibly the finest “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” I have ever heard. With the audience in the palm of her hand, she went on to sustain the spell with a selection of gorgeously-rendered operatic arias, the capstone being an impromptu duet on Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” with a music student she invited to join her onstage. It was a memorable weekend of performances that sent everyone into the winter nights aglow with warm fuzzies.

This week, Princeton will have another chance to experience Blue’s enchantment when she returns for opening night of The Princeton Festival, this Friday at 8 p.m.

On the program will be arias by Puccini, Verdi, and Gershwin, with music director Rossen Milanov conducting the PSO in additional orchestral works by Puccini, Dvořák, Delius, and zarzuela master Ruperto Chapí.

The festival, continuing through June 22, will include concerts that embrace a wide variety of genres. As always, the centerpiece will be opera, with this year three fully-staged performances of Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” (June 14, 16 & 18).

But there will also be a Tina Turner tribute show (including Broadway star and “American Idol” finalist LaKisha Jones, June 8 ), a Latin American family program (with Sonia De Los Santos and her band, June 9), chamber music by Shostakovich, Beethoven, and Reena Esmail (with the Abeo Quartet, June 13), dance with American Repertory Ballet (with choreography by Arthur Mitchell and Meredith Raine and music by Philip Glass, Grieg, Miranda Scripp, and Sibelius, June 15), Black choral music (with Capital Singers of Trenton and friends, directed by Westminster Choir College’s Vinroy D. Brown, Jr., June 19), Baroque favorites, including a selection of “Brandenburg Concertos” (with the ensemble The Sebastians, June 20), genre-bending classical crossover (with the trio Empire Wild, June 21), and cabaret (with Tony Award winning artist, for his tour de force performance in Broadway’s “Tootsie,” Santino Fontana, June 22).

Most of the concerts, including opening night with Angel Blue, will be presented in the performance pavilion on the grounds of Morven Museum & Garden at 55 Stockton St. (a.k.a. Route 202). Concerts featuring the Abeo Quartet and The Sebastians will be held across the road at Trinity Church Princeton (technically 33 Mercer St.).

For more information and additional events, including pre-performance talks, the Juneteenth celebration, an art exhibit opening, and Yoga in the Garden, visit the festival website at princetonsymphony.org/festival.

Clockwise from upper left: Angel Blue, Sonia De Los Santos, Santino Fontana, and Empire Wild

June 4, 2024
Jeff Beck’s Classical Guitar Legacy

As the world mourns the passing of rock guitarist Jeff Beck, whose influential career spanned an eventful 60 years, it’s to be remembered that he also recognized beauty in the music of other genres, often consolidating it with his own style.

Among his 16 Grammy nominations (and eight wins) was a cover of “Nessun dorma,” the standout aria from Puccini’s “Turandot,” recognized as Best Pop Instrumental Performance of 2010. Here it is in concert.

Beck also recorded an arrangement of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

Thanks to “The Guv’nor” for helping to get the word out. Good music is good music. R.I.P.

January 12, 2023
Puccini’s Christmas La Bohème Origins

Puccini?! What you doing, being born so close to Christmas?

No matter, here’s a student work, his “Capriccio sinfonico.” Puccini wrote the piece in 1883, while still at the Milan Conservatory. You may recognize some of the music since he later recycled it in his most frequently performed opera, “La bohème.” You’ll detect the bohemians at around the 4-minute mark.

Now that you’re in the mood for hopeless Christmas romance, here’s Luciano Pavarotti and company in Acts I & II of “La bohème,” set on Christmas Eve. Interestingly, the production is directed by Gian Carlo Menotti (he of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” fame). Mimi is sung by Fiamma Izzo d’Amico – no relation, surely?

December 22, 2022
Puccini’s Birthday: La Bohème & Bohemian Life
Happy birthday, Giacomo Puccini!

The first two acts of “La bohème,” of course, are set on Christmas Eve – Act I in a chilly but cheery artists’ garret, and Act II on the festive streets of Paris’ Latin Quarter.

The world premiere of Puccini’s opera took place at the Teatro Regio in Turin on February 1, 1896. On the podium was a 28-year-old Arturo Toscanini.

Allegedly, the opening night reaction was a subdued one, and critics were divided. But it wasn’t long before Rodolfo’s kindling gave rise to a flame that would engulf all of Europe and the New World.

Though audiences quickly grew to love it, “Bohème” and its composer have always been regarded with a degree of suspicion – condescension even – by critics and Puccini’s envious colleagues. The music lacks sophistication, we are told, and the opera’s lyricism and pathos are calculating – emotional pandering. Whether or not that’s the case, music lovers can’t get enough of it and Puccini cried all the way to the bank.

Prior to his years of success, Puccini and his friends, mostly writers and artists, would gather at a roadside shed in Torre del Lago to drink and play cards. They referred to the structure as “Capanna di Giovanni delle Bande Nere” (“Cabin of Giovanni of the Black Stripes”), after its owner, a local cobbler. When the cobbler struck out to seek his fortune in America, the artists bought the shack and continued to meet under the banner “La Bohème Club” (as stated on a sign they painted on the roof).

Further signs were posted on the walls inside, in faulty Latin and ungrammatical Italian. Its members pledged themselves under oath to be well and eat butter.

The following were the club’s by-laws:
1. Poker faces, pedants, weak stomachs, blockheads, puritans and other wretches of the species are not admitted and will be chased away.
2. The President acts as conciliator but undertakes to hinder the Treasurer in the collection of the subscription money.
3. The Treasurer is empowered to abscond with the money.
4. The lighting of the locale is provided by a petrol lamp. Failing the fuel, the “moccoli” of the members are to be used [a pun on “moccolo,” meaning either “candle stump” or “blockhead”].
5. All games permitted by law are forbidden.
6. Silence is prohibited.
7. Wisdom is not permitted, except in special cases.
One can imagine the carefree bohemians, Rodolfo’s companions, rollicking in their garret. After the triumph of “Bohème,” the opera, no one was having to burn their plays for fuel, or hock their coats for medicine.

There’s nothing like a little success to take the worry out of “bohemian life.”

André Kostelanetz (also born on this date) conducting a purely orchestral suite of highlights from “La bohème”

The bohemians in their garret

Mimi’s hands are cold, so Rodolfo goes to work (the old smoothie)

IMAGES: From an 1896 poster of the opera, and an 1897 photo of the club
December 22, 2021

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS