In Review > North America
La Bohème
NEW YORK CITY
The Metropolitan Opera
11/18/11
Hong and Pittas, the Met's Mimì and Rodolfo
© Johan Elbers 2012
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The November 18 Met season premiere of Franco Zeffirelli's 1981 La Bohème bore little novelty; surely most operagoers from Tonga to Timbuktu have witnessed this staging, which even a critic residing far from New York for half of the past three decades has seen a dozen times. One forgives the excesses of Act II for the lovely, snowy Barrière d'Enfer scene; the bookend garret acts have never aimed very high. In David Kneuss's revival direction, Mimì noticed Rodolfo pocketing her key, not a touch I recall hereabouts before. Still, there were many un-dry eyes by the opera's final chords.
This was in great part due to the extraordinarily lovely-sounding and -looking Mimì of Hei-Kyung Hong, exactly twenty-seven years and one day after her company debut as Mozart's Servilia. Cutting a girlish figure, Hong offered limpid tone with satin finish practically from the beginning to the end of the night. Hong doesn't dig into text in Albanese/Scotto fashion, but her phrasing proved magical. Rarely has Act I's concluding high C — or the entire final scene — sounded more luminous. Dimitri Pittas canceled some high-profile bookings last season due to health problems; it was good to see him back looking healthy and acting Rodolfo with sensitivity, though (apart from some pleasantly mellow middle-voice singing) he did not sound, in terms of tonal scope or steadiness at forte, as if he had completely recovered his form. Perhaps because neither of his principals could offer great volume, Louis Langrée kept the orchestra not only light but notably slow; for example, Musetta's waltz had a near-Viennese torpor, and Mimì died visually several seconds before Puccini's chords caught up.
Susanna Phillips made a resonant, likable Musetta: her generic Momus antics seemed appliqué and rehearsed, rather than the product of any internal demon for attention, but she sang nicely in Act IV. Despite his considerable gifts — youth, good looks and a voice that seems potentially the answer to the world drought of Verdi baritones — Alexey Markov made a faceless, routine Marcello, weighed down by darkened Italian vowels and a lack of specific, idiomatic connection to the text. Curtis-trained English bass Matthew Rose made an accomplished debut as Colline, though little in his genial singing suggested that Italian opera will be his long suit. Patrick Carfizzi's sonorous Schaunard proved verbally the most acute and lively among the evening's Bohemians. Veteran Paul Plishka repeated his usual cameos of Benoit and Alcindoro with gusto. 
DAVID SHENGOLD
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