Word: bohs
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...most ambitious opera, Turandot, which he left unfinished at his death in 1924. Completed by his friend Franco Alfano, Turandot is rarely performed despite the exotic splendors of its score. Chief reasons for its neglect: a certain harshness that sets it apart from the big Puccini favorites (Tosca, Bohème, Butterfly), some devilishly difficult vocal parts, and a need for sumptuous staging...
...appearances regularly touch off frenzies of acclaim the like of which the country has not seen in 30 years, since the heyday of Claudia Muzio. Since she made her U.S. debut (in San Francisco) eight years ago, every house she has sung to has been sold out, and her Bohème at the Metropolitan two seasons ago drew surging, partisan crowds that choked traffic around the house until 2 a.m. Some 30 cities in this country are bidding for her services at a top price of $5,000 per recital. Her American recording royalties alone from the 23 titles...
Then as now, the Met was not an adventurous house: it depended on its unparalleled roster of singers, and while for years it attempted more new works than it does today, most of them met with little immediate success. When it launched La Bohème (with Melba) in 1900, Henry Krehbiel, in the New York Tribune, roundly panned the new opera: "[It] is foul in subject, and fulminant but futile in its music...
...living allowance, free coaching in Milan and a crack at singing professionally on Italian opera stages. Last week five of the first batch of eight winners (four sopranos, one tenor, two baritones, one bass) had a chance to show off their talents in a student production of La Bohème in Florence's famed Teatro della Pergola...
...girl pressed against a grated window in Venice. "This," he said, "is the kind of libretto I want for my next opera." Failing in his lifelong search for a girl who combined frailness with sensuality, he built those qualities into a procession of operatic heroines - Manon Lescaut, Mimi in Bohème, Cio-Cio-San in Butterfly, Liù in Turandot. His obsession with swift love followed by swifter death gave his work a narrow emotional range, a failing of which he was conscious. He envied Wagner his heroic themes and majestic brasses, idolized Verdi's poetic tragedies...