"La Boheme” is the featured opera on this week’s Sunday Opera (11/7 3:00 p.m.), twice! Our first Boheme comes to us from LA Opera and features Marina Costa-Jackson and Samir Pirgu as Puccini’s star-crossed Lovers, Mimi and the poet Rodolfo. They’re joined by Erica Petrocelli as Musetta, Kihun Yoon as the painter Marcello, Nicholas Brownlee as the philosopher Colline, and Michaelk J. Hawk as the musician Schaunard with James Conlon leading the LA Opera Chorus and Orchestra. Our second “Boheme” is one written concurrently with Puccini’s, but one that was sadly eclipsed by it. Leoncavallo’s story is perhaps a bit truer to the novel by Henri Murger and focuses mostly on the relationship between Musetta and Marcello and begins with a riotous scene in the Café Momus. In this recording, Marcello is Franco Bonisolli, Musetta is Alexandrina Milcheva, Mimi is Lucia Popp, Rodolfo is Bernd Weikl, Schaunard is Alan Titus, and Colline is Raimund Grumbach. Supporting this cast is the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Munich Radio Orchestra under the direction of Heinz Wallberg.
Join us for two differing treatments of the same material adding up to an afternoon of excellent singing and beautiful music.
