IN MEMORIAM: Gianni Raimondi, Italian tenor (13 April 1923 – 19 October 2008)

The death of Gianni Raimondi on 19 October further distances today's audiences and opera-lovers from the heady days of Italian tenor singing that charmed and thrilled audiences in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Coming from the tradition that produced Caruso and Gigli, the young Raimondi shared Italy’s stages with Ferruccio Tagliavini and Giuseppe di Stefano. Later, sharing the bel canto repertory with Carlo Bergonzi and the young Luciano Pavarotti, Raimondi conquered the world’s major houses with his beautiful, evenly-produced tone, exciting upper register, and stylish singing.

Born in Bologna in 1923, Raimondi’s earliest successes were in and near his native city, in Rigoletto and Don Pasquale. Raimondi took one of the six tenor roles in Rossini’s Armida (and proved virtually the only one of the six who adequately and gracefully rendered his role) in the famous 1952 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production which featured Maria Callas in the title role. This was the first in what would ultimately become an extensive list of collaborations between the Bolognese tenor and the great soprano.

Following the success of his performance in the Florentine Armida, Raimondi sang his début performances in London and Paris in 1953. He returned to Italy in 1954 and made his début at Naples’ Teatro San Carlo with another collaboration with Callas in Lucia di Lammermoor. Two further productions featuring Callas offered Raimondi his first of many opportunities to enjoy great acclaim at La Scala: the 1956 Visconti production of La Traviata, the occasion of Raimondi’s house début (substituting for di Stefano), and the much-praised 1957 production of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena.

Building upon further successes in Italy and throughout Europe, Raimondi made his MET début in 1965 as Rodolfo in La Bohème opposite the Mimì of Mirella Freni, also making her house début. In two seasons with the MET, he also sang Puccini’s Cavaradossi and Gounod’s Faust.

Raimondi was invited to the Wiener Staatsoper by Herbert von Karajan, where he made his début as Alfredo in a production of La Traviata that featured the beguiling Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani and baritone Rolando Panerani. Raimondi also sang Rodolfo in a Staatsoper production of La Bohème under von Karajan’s baton and again opposite Freni’s trademark Mimì that remains available on both CD and DVD.

Italy was the center of Raimondi’s career, however, and his performances in virtually every Italian city where opera was sung on a professional level expanded his repertory to include nearly all of the Verdi lyric tenor roles. Displaying wisdom that exceeded that of many of his rivals, Raimondi refused to take on the more glamorous but potentially damaging heavier roles of Manrico (Il Trovatore), Alvaro (La Forza del Destino), Radamès (Aïda), and Otello. Raimondi also obstinately refused to learn the cabalettas for his characters in Rigoletto and La Traviata, traditionally cut but increasingly included in productions as Raimondi’s career progressed.

On records, Raimondi was unfortunately largely overlooked in favor of the more known (particularly in American and Britain) di Stefano, Mario del Monaco, Franco Corelli, and Carlo Bergonzi. Pirated recordings of Raimondi in most of his Verdi and bel canto roles exist, however. In any of its guises (my own personal favorite owing to its significantly improved sound quality being the recent Myto Historical release) the La Scala Anna Bolena remains an impressive performance though, to be fair, Raimondi was not at his absolute best and lost a great deal of his music due to extensive cuts. Raimondi’s Alfredo in DGG’s studio Traviata with the Violetta of the young Renata Scotto remains competitive. His single finest recording, in my opinion, is a CETRA (now reissued by Warner/Fonit) performance of La Favorita with the stunningly effective Leonora of Fedora Barbieri (along with the aging Carlo Tagliabue and the sepulchral Giulio Neri). Raimondi’s singing of ‘Spirto gentil,’ one of Donizetti’s simplest but most memorable melodic inspirations, is substantial proof of the communicative power of opera, and his timbre throughout is as golden, as filled with that intangible essence of Italianate slancio, and as seductively beautiful as any sound to be heard on records. This Favorita preserves a great performance by a great singer and not only withstands comparison with but triumphs over Pavarotti’s singing of the same role on a later DECCA studio recording.

Possessing an exceptionally beautiful natural timbre that could be both suave and powerful, Raimondi mastered the art of projecting effectively into large houses. Perhaps more significantly, he sang largely without artifice and relied upon the glorious sound at his command to impersonate opera’s most dashing heroes.

IN MEMORIAM: Horst Stein, German conductor (2 May 1928 - 27 July 2008)

Born in 1920 in the German town of Elberfeld (now a district of the city of Wuppertal, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia), Horst Stein was a mechanic’s son who benefited significantly from his youth in the same city that produced Hans Knappertsbusch and Günter Wand. Attending both Frankfurt’s Musikhochschule and Köln’s famed Conservatory, Stein studied composition with Philipp Jarnach and conducting with Wand prior to returning to Wuppertal to accept an appointment as répétiteur. This led to Stein’s first appointment as the Music Director of a leading opera company, at the Hamburg State Opera in 1951.

Stein honed his skills as a Wagnerian at Bayreuth, where from 1952 he worked alongside Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Joseph Keilberth, and Herbert von Karajan. Much admired by Wolfgang Wagner, Stein would eventually conduct 138 performances at Bayreuth encompassing all of Wagner’s mature scores except Der Fliegende Holländer and Lohengrin, including the 1983 Bayreuth Centenary production of Die Meistersinger. Stein notably mastered shaping the tonal textures produced by Bayreuth’s orchestra to match the unique acoustics of the Festspielhaus and was also instrumental in facilitating Norbert Balatsch’s transition into the directorship of Bayreuth’s chorus. Wolfgang Wagner especially relied upon Stein’s reliability and firm leadership in launching his own production of Der Ring des Nibelungen during the 1970 – ’75 Festivals.

One of the greatest controversies of Stein’s Bayreuth career was his replacement for three performances during the 1976 Festival and the entire run of performances during the ’77 Festival of the legendary conductor Carlos Kleiber in Tristan und Isolde. Audiences bitterly disappointed at being denied the opportunity to hear the firebrand Kleiber conduct Wagner’s most passionate score expressed their displeasure with Stein’s less eccentric conducting, a view mostly shared by the press. Stein’s admirers praised the strength and steadiness of his leadership and suggested that Kleiber’s conducting of Tristan und Isolde during the 1975 Festival produced little of genuine interest and threatened to undermine the careful construction of Wagner’s score.

Stein’s Bayreuth appearances were supplemented by an especially fruitful career with the Wiener Staatsoper, where he conducted more than 500 performances. Among Stein’s most famous assignments at the Staatsoper was the much-acclaimed production of Verdi’s Don Carlo starring Franco Corelli, Gundula Janowitz, Eberhard Wächter, Shirley Verrett, Nicolai Ghiaurov, and Martti Talvela.

Stein also held chief conductor positions with the Suisse Romande, Bamberg Symphony, and Basle Symphony orchestras, in addition to conducting performances by the Berlin, London, and Vienna Philharmonics, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra.

On records, Stein proved an apt and celebrated interpreter of the orchestral works of Max Reger, the often deceptive symphonies of Anton Bruckner, and the piano concerti of Beethoven. My own personal favorites among Stein’s discography are a studio recording for the German branch of EMI of Bizet’s Carmen, sung in German, with Christa Ludwig, Rudolf Schock, and Hermann Prey, in which Stein summons a surprising degree of Gallic charm and renders an appropriate, superbly-sung Carmen with what is essentially a Lohengrin cast; and a 1970 performance of Tristan und Isolde, recorded ‘live’ from the stage of the Wiener Staatsoper, with Ingrid Bjöner and Hans Beirer as the lovers, Ruth Hesse as Brangäne, Walter Kreppel as Marke, and Otto Wiener as Kurwenal, a performance that impresses because of its shapeliness and restraint, allowing the moments of great passion to explode from the surrounding music.

Stein is largely remembered as one of the last members of the expiring breed of the German Kapellmeister, a term that has unfortunately taken on negative connotations. Stein exemplified the best qualities of the Kapellmeister tradition: thorough education, deep knowledge of the repertory, easy rapport with players and singers alike, complete commitment, and an inherent ability to allow the music before him to take shape as the composer intended without imposition of personal idiosyncrasies or egotistical distortions. Stein’s deep-rooted professionalism is a quality that would be tremendously useful in any of the world’s great opera houses today.

IN MEMORIAM: Peter Glossop, British baritone (6 July 1928 - 7 September 2008)

A humble son of Yorkshire, Peter Glossop rose through the ranks of small English opera companies to become the rare British baritone to enjoy an international career as a renowned interpreter of the Verdi baritone canon.

Born and raised in Sheffield in the north of England, Glossop’s first involvement with opera was in his native Yorkshire. Glossop came to London as a chorister at Sadler’s Wells, where he was appointed after only a few years one of the principal artists of the company. Glossop’s Covent Garden début came in 1961 as Demetrius in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Blessed with a robust voice with a firm, reliable upper extension, Glossop quickly won acclaim in the great Verdi roles, eventually singing his standard repertory of Macbeth, Don Carlo in Ernani, the Conte di Luna in Il Trovatore, Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Rodrigo di Posa in Don Carlo, and Iago in Otello in the world’s greatest opera houses. Glossop remains the only British baritone to have sung the principal Verdi roles at La Scala.

Glossop’s 1971 début at the Metropolian Opera was as Scarpia in Tosca. Glossop’s MET career expanded his repertory with performances as Verdi’s Falstaff, Berg’s Wozzeck, Mr. Redburn in Britten’s Billy Budd and Balstrode in Peter Grimes. In the years preceding his retirement from the operatic stage in 1987, Glossop also gave critically-acclaimed performances as Mandryka in Richard Strauss’ Arabella, Pizarro in Beethoven’s Fidelio, and the title character in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer. Glossop’s final performance was in Los Angeles as Sharpless in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

It is primarily as a Verdi singer that Glossop is remembered, not least owing to his collaboration with Herbert von Karajan in the famous Salzburg production (and subsequent film and studio recording) of Otello featuring Jon Vickers and Mirella Freni. In addition, Glossop recorded a definitive account of Verdi’s first version of Macbeth with Rita Hunter, released on CD by Opera Rara. Glossop’s recorded legacy also reflects a varied career, with performances ranging from Purcell’s Aeneas and Berlioz’s Chorèbe (Les Troyens) to Elgar’s Caractacus and German’s Earl of Essex (Merrie England).

An extroverted personality known for a lively temperament and a fondness for cavorting with the ladies, Glossop brought these same qualities to his operatic performances, creating larger-than-life portraits of troubled characters who were nonetheless capable of wrenchingly tortured pathos. The most important consideration is that, as one can hear on any of his recordings, the voice was magnificent, a beautiful natural timbre combined with a snarling power that projected thrillingly even in large theatres.

Glossop, who suffered with throat cancer during the last years of his life, is survived by his two daughters.

CD REVIEW: Bernd Alois Zimmermann - DIE SOLDATEN (E. Gabry, A. de Ridder, C. Nicolai, Z. Keleman; WERGO)

Bernd Alois ZIMMERMANN (1918 – 1970) – Die Soldaten: E. Gabry (Marie), L. Synek (Gräfin de la Roche), A. de Ridder (Desportes), C. Nicolai (Stolzius), Z. Keleman (Wesener), et. al.; Gürzenich-Orchester Köln; M. Gielen [recorded 21-22.02 & 2-3.03.1965 in the Großer Sendesaal of Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln, following the world premiere of the complete opera on 15.02.1965; WERGO Edition Bernd Alois Zimmermann WER 6698 2]

From the perspective of this writer, the first thing to be written is that this is not the sort of opera by which I expect to be taken in. Modernity and atonality are not traits that attract me to a score and entice me to listen. Admittedly, I have recently been on an atypical journey through contemporary theatrical scores—Daron Aric Hagen’s Bandanna (scored for voices with wind ensemble and Mariachi band!), Francesco d’Avalos’ Maria di Venosa, and Laurent Petitgirard’s fascinating Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man. These scores are considerably more accessible to a listener firmly grounded in tonality, however, than a preliminary examination of the accompanying materials (which outline Zimmermann’s twelve-tone structures in great detail, with superb facsimiles of both the autograph and printed scores) and a slight familiarity with Zimmermann’s music would suggest Die Soldaten to be.

Whose surprise could have been greater than mine, then, when upon listening for the first time to WERGO’s 1965 recording of Zimmermann’s tremendously difficult score, made only days after the first performance of the complete opera at Cologne, I not only appreciated but actually enjoyed the performance? The first positive attribute of the opera is its libretto, drawn from an eighteenth-century ‘homonymous drama’ by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz which also inspired an opera from Zimmermann’s contemporary Manfred Gurlitt. In the same vein as Büchner’s (and, eventually, Berg’s) Wozzeck, Lenz’s drama has as its subject the inherent inhumanity of military life and conflict (which, as in Wozzeck, does not necessarily involve the battlefield). Gurlitt produced a score that owes much to Schoenberg, Webern, and their Viennese school of ‘modernism.’ What Zimmermann created was a considerably further-reaching score, neither more nor less ‘modern’ in the strictest musical sense, involving complex twelve-tone motives, myriad sound effects, integration of recorded music, and vocal styles ranging from the angular patterns familiar to English-speaking listeners from the later works of Tippett to melodic arcs similar to Italian bel canto.

In fact, it is the varied and startling beauty of the singing in this performance that compels attention and ultimately inspires affection for Zimmermann’s score. For Marie, his heroine of sorts, Zimmermann envisioned an atonal Königin der Nacht, spiky coloratura taking her to dizzy heights in the second act. Initially skeptical of the casting of Edith Gabry in the role, not least because of her fortuitous position as the wife of Cologne’s General Music Director István Kertész, Zimmermann succumbed to the allure of Gabry’s absolute commitment to the score and the lovely timbre (honed in more traditional repertory) she brought to her task, eventually adapting portions of the score to accommodate a moderately lowered tessitura for Gabry’s benefit. The results are often sublime, producing vocal lines of eloquence that resemble those of Strauss’ Aminta (Die Schweigsame Frau), Kaiserin (Die Frau ohne Schatten), and Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos). Gabry sings magnificently, bringing a bright tone to music of often fearsome difficulty and negotiating extraordinarily challenging intervals with poise and the appearance of ease. Were one to encounter a performance of this caliber in traditional repertory in any of the world’s great opera houses today, a star would be born instantaneously; deservedly so.

Equally impressive is Anton de Ridder, remembered as a specialist in Italian roles in German-speaking theatres during the third quarter of the twentieth century. Singing his difficult role in Die Soldaten with the same grace and pointed tone with which he might have approached Donizetti’s Edgardo or Verdi’s Alfredo, de Ridder sings wonderfully, striking sparks with Gabry in their scenes together and creating a memorable character who both attracts and repulses.

Also making strong impressions are Zoltán Keleman and Gerd Nienstedt, who bring to Zimmermann’s dark score the same fearlessness, intelligence, and vocal acuity familiar from their Bayreuth performances. Due special mention is tenor Albert Weikenmeier, sounding audibly aged but facing without fear or compromise (or, ultimately, failure) the punishingly high tessitura of his role.

Supervising from the pit is Michael Gielen, that champion of twentieth-century music who—with, among other ensembles, the Cincinnati Symphony, of which he served as Music Director in the 1980’s—also mastered the tricky symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler. Gielen conducts from the first with a discernible sense of being at the helm of the maiden voyage of a contemporary masterpiece, but he completely avoids the common pitfall of treating the score as a monument carved in stone. Gielen seems to phrase the score’s jagged musical paragraphs in step with the players of the superb Gürzenich Orchestra and breathes with his singers, creating a rapport between stage and pit that is all the more astonishing considering that the score also demands coordination with pre-recorded montages. Gielen serves the composer, who supervised both the Cologne production and this recording, with irreproachable honor: higher praise is not possible.

A formidably difficult piece to stage with its requirements of split scenes, film projections, and careful arrangement and deployment of loudspeakers throughout the house, Die Soldaten at first glance seems a score that would best be both seen and heard. This recording, captured in monaural sound that not only belies its age but serves as a model of its kind with which one imagines that Walter Legge would have been well pleased, proves that the opera can be equally effective as an audio-only experience. The people one meets in this opera are almost uniformly unpleasant, with even the ‘good’ characters having undercurrents of suspect morality and insecurity, but the challenging beauty of Zimmermann’s music convinced this listener that this is an inescapable component of humanity and, if one turns one’s perspectives on their heards, there is great poetry to be found in it.

CD REVIEW: Giacomo Puccini - LA BOHÈME (N. Amsellem, M. Haddock, F. Capitanucci, G. Jarman; TELARC)

Giacomo PUCCINI (1858 – 1924) – La Bohème: N. Amsellem (Mimì), M. Haddock (Rodolfo), F. Capitanucci (Marcello), G. Jarman (Musetta), D. Sedov (Colline), C. Schaldenbrand (Schaunard), K. Glavin (Benoit/Alcindoro), B. Howard (Parpignol); Gwinnett Young Singers, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus; Robert Spano [recorded ‘live’ during concert performances in Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center during September 2007; TELARC 80697]

Another recording of La Bohème. Groan. Yes to the former, but in this case not too much of the latter. It is easy to wish that the efforts that went into the recording and release of this Bohème, taken from concert performances given in Atlanta in September 2007, had been applied to another score, one more in need of a competitive recording in digital sound (Manon Lescaut seems an obvious candidate). It is not easy, however, to assemble a credible, competitive Bohème, and that is what Robert Spano and TELARC have achieved.

In many respects, this Bohème, recorded under similar conditions, displays in abundance precisely what the performance on DGG with the starrier pairing of Netrebko and Villazón lacks: a pervasive sense of young lovers in love, of desperate but not devastating poverty, of the gaiety of even troubled existence in the company of friends. In short, this performance is alive, and not merely because there are more audible signs of an audience (including welcome laughter) and efforts at simple staging effects than in the DGG recording. Bohème is not an inexorable progress to tragedy in the manner of a Gluck opera. The ultimate power of Bohème’s pathos is in the speed at which Mimì’s condition deteriorates from her entrance in the final act: we have known since her first appearance in Act One that she is very ill, but we have no reason to suspect that she will not recover. Her new love for Rodolfo demands that she recover. Rodolfo knows in those final moments of the fourth act that she is doomed but is nonetheless stunned when the realization that Mimì has died overtakes him. In this response beats the heart of Bohème and the reason that even hardened opera aficionados listen, even if in secret: there is always that impossible suspension of knowledge and reality and that hope that this is the performance when the love of two charmingly struggling young Bohemians will conquer death. There is in Spano’s performance a disarmingly naïve clinging to hope that both bolsters the inner acts of the opera and underlines the tragedy of Mimì’s death all the more effectively. In this performance, Bohème emerges as what it emphatically is: a beautifully romantic tale with a sudden, annihilating tragic ending. Villazón understood this in the DGG performance but was singing into a veritable void. Spano and all his cast fully comprehend the nature of the score and collectively touch the heart endearingly, defying the fact that this may be the thousandth time one has heard the opera.

Norah Amsellem, veteran of the first Metropolitan Opera performance I attended (a 1997 Carmen, in which she sang Micaëla), proves a capable, thoroughly charming, and ultimately very moving Mimì. Gifted by nature with a voice less opulent than Netrebko’s (to restrict comparison merely with her most recent recorded rival) Amsellem uses her warm timbre, clear diction, and natural sense of portamento to craft a Mimì who is both delicate and passionate. The flood of tone at the climax of her aria, as Mimì laments the fact that the flowers she embroiders lack the fragrances of the real blossoms after which they are modeled, raises the temperature in the frigid garret. It is not difficult to comprehend why a virile young poet is so immediately taken with a woman whose simplest thoughts are inherently poetic when her music is sung with such keen placement of the tone. Thereafter, she brings the perfect combination of shy slyness and wide-eyed amazement to the love duet, given a performance here that is both sensual and intimate. Amsellem makes beautiful contributions to the second act fracas, making touching things of her comments to Rodolfo about her observations that Marcello and Musetta remain madly in love with one another and her pity for them. The third act, a cruel test for any Mimì, brings occasional lapses in firmness, evident mainly in a noticeable but scarcely bothersome loosening of the vibrato at the top of the range in moments of stress, but Amsellem’s resources of wit, feeling, and involvement never fail her. In the final act, Amsellem is equally poignant in Mimì’s fierce battle to cling to life and in her final surrender. When this Mimì dies, one senses that a light has been extinguished, musically and emotionally: one almost imagines all the flowers in Paris, real and embroidered, withering in sympathy. Amsellem’s voice may not withstand detailed comparisons with the greatest Mimìs of the past, but her performance surpasses those of many more famous sopranos and gets at the heart of Puccini’s sweetly assured seamstress.

Marcus Haddock, whose impressive MET début as Gounod’s Faust I witnessed, offers a compelling performance and is very much a member of a tight ensemble rather than a leading tenor going through the paces of a leading tenor role. Haddock shares Amsellem’s clear diction and gratifyingly forward placement of tone. Unlike Villazón on DGG (who utilized a downward transposition), Haddock sings ‘Che gelida manina’ in the autograph key and produces a firm top C mostly free from strain. Haddock’s Rodolfo is in love with poetry and with the very notion of being in love, but Mimì translates his poetic visions into glorious reality. As noted, Haddock combines with Amsellem for an uncommonly enjoyable performance of the love duet that ends the first act. Haddock brings genuine feeling to his contributions to the second act, in which Rodolfo is too often lost in the crowd. Aided by Spano, Haddock gives due emphasis to the line in which Rodolfo introduces Mimì to his friends and says that, though he is a poet, she is poetry. When sung with sincerity and appropriately honeyed tone, is there any more touching sentiment in opera? The third act also brings the greatest trials for Rodolfo, vocally and dramatically, and the heroic undertones of Haddock’s voice serve him well. Variously jealous and petulant, Haddock’s Rodolfo is nonetheless as quick to forgiveness as he is to anger. The sense of relief in Rodolfo’s tone when he and Mimì resolve to remain together through the winter is touchingly honest. Haddock fully explores the dramatic turns of the final act without resorting to overwrought histrionics. Rather than the cries of a wounded artist, Haddock’s final voicings of Mimì’s name are the exasperated words of a young lover, a frightened and shattered Orpheus calling to his disappearing Eurydice. Haddock lacks an easily-identifiable, distinctive timbre, but this is a distinctive, distinguished, completely idiomatic Rodolfo.

Spano and his Atlanta forces surrounded Amsellem and Haddock with a team of expert Bohemians. Georgia Jarman proves a magnificent, nearly revelatory, Musetta, singing with poise, charm, pointed but attractive tone, and diction that only occasionally strays from the high standard set by Amsellem and Haddock. Jarman begins her famous waltz insouciantly, tossing off her purposefully deceptive gaiety, and delivering climactic top notes with pinging precision. Taken as a whole, the waltz ensemble receives from all involved one of its finest performances on records. Fabio Capitanucci, a singer previously unknown to me, is a Marcello who responds with eloquence to Rodolfo, Mimì, and Musetta. A measure of nostalgia is perhaps missing from Marcello’s last-act duet with Rodolfo, but Capitanucci sings throughout with nuance and well-placed tone. It is, of course, a true pleasure to hear a native Italian in the role. Bass Denis Sedov is one of the better Collines to be encountered in recent years: while pointing the text with cleverness, Sedov’s tone is also capable of unfurling magnificently in a manner befitting a great ‘bear’ of a character. Beginning with Monteverdi’s Seneca, philosophers seem to require bass voices that can roll voluptuously into the depths without becoming lugubrious. Kevin Glavin revels in his double assignment as Benoit and Alcindoro, articulating both characters without caricature or the unnecessary bluster with which many singers of these roles seek to disguise vocal shortcomings. Completing the team of principals is Christopher Schaldenbrand, whose performance as Schaunard confirms his reputation as one of American’s finest young baritones. This is a singer who can reach the lowest notes of his role to, along with Colline, anchor ensembles and can also encompass the role’s highest notes without shouting or forcing. It is surely ironic that Schaunard, the musician of the group, so seldom receives a truly musical performance. Schaldenbrand supplies musicality in abundance, however, and delivers his retelling of the melodrama involving the English Milord, the parrot, and the poisoned parsley with an increasingly-annoyed wit that is genuinely funny. In this, Schaldenbrand brings to mind the wonderful John Reardon, but Schaldenbrand’s voice is more beautiful and his theatrical instincts show greater savvy.

It is well known that Robert Spano has wrought wonders with the Symphony during his tenure in Atlanta. To state that the Atlanta Symphony here plays unobtrusively may seem unkind, but it is intended as a tribute to the complete security of the playing. There is none of the symphonic preening that one often hears from great orchestras in this score. The Symphony, guided by Spano, simply play the score with grace, color, and perfect timing, never forgetting that they are accompanying—rather than competing with—a team of singers who are enacting a very human drama. Director Norman Mackenzie also deserves a word of praise for the excellent balance among the child and adult choristers. Above all, though, it is Spano who brings this performance together, conducting with mastery that never draws attention to itself but shapes a sequence of four brief acts that eloquently move from first love to unmitigated celebration and then from resignation and suspicion to bitter reunion and extraordinary sadness. It is disheartening to note how many world-famous conductors with casts of world-famous singers fail to make this journey in the space of La Bohème’s two hours. Spano and his cast achieve a performance that, if not displacing the classic recordings with Albanese and Gigli, de los Angeles and Björling, both entertains and inspires. Taken on its own merits, it is a performance to cherish, and moreover one that proves that casts of brand-name singers often do not create the same magic provided by people who simply care about the story they are telling.