Patrick Bade
La Bohème

Patrick Bade - La Boheme

- Right. So people often say to me, ‘cause they know I love opera, and they say, they have a husband or a grandchild, more often a grandchild, they want to introduce to opera. And they say, “what would be the best opera to start with?” And I always say, it should be, without doubt “La Boheme”. “La Boheme” has more tears, more laughter, more good tunes per minute than any other opera ever written. If somebody doesn’t like “La Boheme”, they’re either a completely hopeless case as far as opera is concerned, and probably quite unmusical, or there is something, I can only say, seriously wrong with them. It’s been the favourite opera of so many people, some unexpected people. The pleasure-loving King Edward VIII, the austere, uptight George V. It was the favourite opera of both of them. Somebody once said to King George V, “what’s your favourite opera?” And he said, “La Boheme is my favourite opera because it’s the shortest”, which is not strictly true. There are plenty of shorter operas than “La Boheme”, but it feels the shortest because it keeps you on the edge of your seat, you can never be bored for a minute while listening to “La Boheme”. So I was actually very lucky in that it was my first live opera experience, and that was on my 12th birthday. And that was the 31st of August 1963 at the Opera Comique in Paris. And I still have the programme. And when I look at it, I think, oh, how lucky I was actually, it was must have been a wonderful performance. Of course I was really too young to really judge.

But there was the young French Italian soprano, Adriana Maliponte, she was only 22 years old at the time. She looked lovely and I’ve been listening to her on YouTube and she’s absolutely gorgeous. She’s an ideal Mimi. The conductor was Albert Wolff. He was an old man at the time. He’d been a stalwart of the Opera Comique since 1908, with a break during the Second World War. As a Jew he had to flee from France, he went to South America, but he came back again and continued his career. Now, I remember that occasion so vividly. I remember being absolutely enchanted by the interior of the Opera House. It’s exquisite, it’s a little jewel. It’s like a smaller version of the big Paris Opera. And the other thing I remember was that my mother sobbed quietly through the whole performance. She didn’t wait for the sad bits. She was sobbing right from the start. There’s nothing to sob about really in Act One, and thinking about it in later years. I thought, there’s a clue here into the very special appeal of this opera. I think she was crying not for Mimi, she was crying for her own lost youth. She’d wanted to be a singer briefly before the Second World War. And she certainly studied the role of Mimi. But it’s an opera that encapsulates a certain period in everybody’s life. Of when you’ve just left adolescence. You’re just reaching adulthood. You haven’t yet taken on all those responsibilities of marriage, children, career. And a lot of people look back on that period of their lives with huge nostalgia. So I do think that’s an important part of the appeal of the opera. It’s based on an episodic novel that was published in the 1840s by the French writer, Henri Murger, it’s autobiographical, many incidents in his own life.

And it was immediately very popular, has remained popular in France. And it was actually another composer, Leoncavallo, who spotted the potential for an opera. And he wrote a libretto, which he brought to Puccini and he offered it to Puccini and Puccini didn’t like the libretto, so he turned it down, but he did like the subject. So it was very unfortunate for poor Leoncavallo 'cause Leoncavallo thought that Puccini wasn’t interested. So he set to work on it. And he wrote an operalso called “La Boheme”. And he was a bit slower off the mark than Puccini. So Puccini’s opera was performed first and delightful though Leoncavallo’s “La Boheme” is, you know, I recommend it if you’re really into opera, I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s also very tuneful, but frankly it never stood a snowball’s chance in hell against Puccini’s version. So here is poor Leoncavallo. He was always a bit mocked by the other composers. They nicknamed him, Leoncavallo means lion horse. And they nicknamed him Leon-assino. In other words, lion donkey. So instead Puccini was, there were two things about Puccini. A very nice man, very polite man in general, but totally ruthless when it came to looking for operatic subjects. He once described himself as a great hunter of wild ducks, beautiful women, and operatic libretti. And he was always turned on by a libretto if he thought he’d actually manage to steal it, to snatch it under from under another composer’s nose. As happened, of course, with “Tosca” and Franchetti. And he also, this mild mannered, charming man turned into a total bully when he was working with his librettists.

He knew exactly what he wanted and he bullied them till he got it. The most important team of Librettists that he worked with were Luigi Illica, who I talked about last week in connection with Andrea Chenier. He’s on the right here. Herbert made this interesting comment about how he’d lost an ear in a duel and that this photograph might seem to corroborate that. He wrote the plots and Giuseppe Giacosa in the middle, he versified the libretto. The first performance was not in Milan. It was often thought safer. Milan was such a snake pit, really at La Scala. It was often thought safer to put on a premier elsewhere. So the premier was actually in Turin with the very young Arturo Toscanini, who you see on the left hand side. And he lived long enough to make an LP complete recording, which I will play you a couple of extracts from. And here are the two main protagonists. Evan Gorga, I don’t think we have records of him. And Cesira Ferrani, who was the first Mimi. She did make records, but I won’t inflict them on you because actually they’re nearly not terribly good or very interesting. So the two main roles, the tenor and the soprano, the tenor role is Rodolfo. He is an impoverished poet living with a group of student friends in a garret in the Latin Quarter. So what do we want from him? Well, he’s got to be youthful and romantic. Of course, it’s nice if he looks like Jose Carreras did when he sang it at Covent Garden with, there you can see him with Teresa Stratas. I think that must be the Met. He looked perfect for the part and he was pretty good in it too. But more important than looking like a romantic poet, you’ve got a sound like one.

And on the right hand side, we’ve got Gigli who certainly never looked like love’s young dream, but he certainly sounds it. And he’s actually probably my preferred Rodolfo in any complete operatic set because he’s just so alive, he’s just so completely in the part. So we want a tenor, essentially a lyric tenor, but a tenor with a certain amount of power and stamina. And who can go up to a ringing top C in the big Act 1 aria. So who have we got here? Oh yes, here is Gigli at the climax of the Act 1 aria. So inimitable sweetness, honey tone, and a wonderful variety of expression. Now for Mimi, we need some of the same qualities. We need a lyric soprano stroke spinto. A spinto is the Italian equivalent of that I was talking about in the context of “Lohengrin”. So it’s somebody who sounds very young, but there are moments in the opera where a pure lyric soprano is really stressed 'cause you know, there are a few big orchestral climaxes that she has to be able to make herself heard over. The most important thing is, again, forget appearance. I don’t mind how fat a soprano is, if she’s a great singing actress, if she can really enter the role, she really makes you believe in the part. We want to believe that this is a desirable, fragile, feminine young woman. Femininity I think is very, very important to convey in this role. And here we have the, I suppose the ideal Mimi voice in the young Renata Tibaldi, again, the climax of her act 1 aria.

• Act one takes place, as I said, in a garret in the Latin Quarter. That’s the student quarter of Paris on the left bank. A little bit of a problem, particularly in really big opera houses like the Met. I think it pays to hear “La Boheme” in a smaller opera house as I did in my first performance. Otherwise, there’s something a little bit absurd about this garret lost, you know, on a huge operatic stage, it can land up looking like a rather shabby penthouse suite. This is the Julia Trevelyan Oman set that lasted, oh, a good 30, 40 years at Covent Garden. This is the set that I was most familiar with. Here you see a set from Barcelona. So as with Giordano and most of the verissimo composers, Puccini did away with the idea of an overture or an extended prelude. He wants to thrust you straight into the action and get you straight into the atmosphere. And he opens the opera with a theme of bounding energy that really suggests the youthfulness of the protagonists. And actually, he was reusing this theme from an earlier work that he wrote. Well, he was himself actually a student at the Milan Conservatoire. And throughout the opera, it comes back again almost as a kind of leitmotif. He’d certainly been listening to Wagner, to suggest the boisterous spirits of the Bohemians. This is incidently from the Toscanini recordings. As I said, Toscanini conducted the world premiere in 1896. Now we’re introduced to the two main characters among the Bohemians, Rodolfo the poet, Marcello the painter. And they’re both very impoverished living in this garret, and they can’t afford fuel for the stove. And so here they’re complaining about this in the first duet.

• They’re joined by a third Bohemian, the philosopher Colline, who comes in wearing a heavy overcoat. They’re still all freezing and they decide that drastic action is necessary. They briefly consider burning the furniture, the chair. Then they consider burning Marcello’s masterpiece, a painting of the crossing of the Red Sea. But they think, no, no, that would be awful because the oil paint will make a nasty smell. And eventually Rodolfo agrees to sacrifice his unpublished masterpiece. So we hear the bohemians tearing up the pages and feeding the stove, and we hear the fire blazing up. And they make various funny and sarcastic and ironic comments about, that’s the sound of kisses and so on. It’s very pictorial music. I mentioned in the context of “Rosenkavalier”, that Strauss had this great ability to paint with the orchestra. And that is a quality that Puccini shares with him. Tearing up the pages. And all the little sparks in the fire.

• Now, a fourth bohemian called Schaunard arrives. And he’s just earned some money. Working for an eccentric wealthy Englishman who had a sick parrot. And he’s supposed to play the violin to the parrot as it’s dying. And eventually he gets impatient with it and poisons it. But he arrives back with some things to eat and with some money, more importantly. Then there’s a very funny, humorous episode when the landlord comes and they manage to bamboozle him out of the rent. But all of Bohemians, well, the three of them apart from Rodolfo, they decide to go off and spend their money. It’s Christmas Eve and they want to go off to celebrate in the Latin Quarter. But Rodolfo says, “No, I can’t come. I’ve got to finish off this article I’m writing.” So they leave him behind and he’s sitting there stuck for inspiration for the article. When suddenly we hear knock on the door. And this is a sheer magic moment. From the other side of the door, we sense the presence of a beautiful, fragile, exquisite young woman. How do we know this? 'Cause we haven’t seen her. The orchestra tells us, this ravishing melody sort of rises up in the orchestra. It starts off on the woodwind, it’s transferred to the strings. It’s like a perfume coming out into the auditorium. So we know all about Mimi even before we’ve seen her. And this is a very Puccini thing. Puccini was always immensely careful to present his heroine to the audience in a very effective way. It’s quite interesting that three of his heroines, Mimi, Tosca and Madam Butterfly are heard before they’re seen. We hear their voice off stage and the music is telling us what to expect when they come on stage.

So Mimi lives in a little room, also at the top of the building. This is very typical in Parisian apartment blocks. You know, the higher you go, the poorer the people. That’s true in my apartment block as well. They’re tiny, tiny apartments at the top. And on the way up the stairs, her candle has gone out and she can’t see to open her door. So she comes in to ask for a light for her candle, but the effort of going up the stairs has been too much for her. She’s out of breath and she’s exhausted and she faints into a convenient chair. And so what does a young Frenchman do? He doesn’t offer a cup of tea as an Englishman might. No. He offers a glass of wine. So I’m going to play you this wonderful moment where we hear, first of all, we hear Rodolfo saying that he’s stuck for inspiration. He’s not in the mood. Then we hear the knock and then we sense Mimi behind the door before she opens it and we see her. So she soon recovers and she’s about to go. And then she notices that she’s dropped her keys on the floor. And as they start to search, her candle goes out and Rodolfo of course sees an opportunity there and he quickly, furtively blows out his own candle. So they’re in the dark and they’re on the floor and they’re searching for the keys. And then this one of the most magical enchanting moments in all of opera, and always a moment looked forward to by every keen opera lover. As they’re searching on the floor, their hands touch and as their hands touch, there is a chord in the orchestra with plucked harp. And it’s wonderful the way this conveys this sensation of two young people who touch in the dark. And there’s a sort of frisson and there’s also a frisson in the audience because every opera goer knows that once you hear that chord, you should be in for 15 minutes of utter delight and pleasure. Just some of the most gorgeous melodious music ever written for an opera.

• So this is the starting point for two glorious arias and a ravishing duet. And these two arias, Rodolfo’s it’s translated here as “how cold your little hand is”, but it’s traditionally “your tiny hand is frozen”. And then Mimi’s . These are two of the most famous, the most loved arias in the entire operatic repertoire. They’re very, very familiar. So in a way, the danger is to just listen to the gorgeous tunes and the gorgeous voices. But you are going to really miss out if that’s all you do, because each of these arias is telling a story. And you want a singer who can embody the character and really convey the story. Now I’ve chosen the these two, the first aria is you’re going to hear Jussi Bjorling and that’s from the complete recording with Beecham that many people, and Victoria de los Angeles, many people think that is the finest recording ever made. And it’s certainly magnificent, maybe all around it is. It wouldn’t really be quite my favourite, Bjorling sings like a god, that you’ll hear. The sound is absolutely gorgeous and he really does sound young and he really does sound ardent. Maybe not quite the kind of changing expression that you might find from a great Italian tenor.

• Now I’m going to play you Mimi’s answer to him and I’m going to introduce you to my favourite soprano ever, actually my favourite singer ever. Full stop. This is Magda Olivero. And on the left you can see her, that’s in 1999. No it wasn’t, it was 2009. That’s right. 2009 because that was her 99th birthday. And I went to visit her in Milan. And after this photograph was taken, she took me out to lunch in her favourite restaurant. And over lunch I mentioned a particular aria that I liked and she just sang it to me over the lunch table. What I thought was so sweet. And obviously in the restaurant they were used to her doing this because nobody even turned a head. Now what’s so special about her? Well, she has a very unusual voice. Not everybody finds it beautiful. I find it beautiful. I’ll be interested to know whether you do. It’s a very characterful voice. What I think is so great about her is her unique ability to absolutely live what she’s singing about. I’ll show you the text here. You’ll see every word is felt. Every word is totally sincere. When she says, “talk of love, of spring,” “di primavera”, I’d like you to the way there’s a little rush of emotion, a little swell of the voice on the word “primavera”. And then when she turns halfway through the aria to Rodolfo and she says to him, “Are you actually listening to me? Do you understand what I’m saying?” You’ll see a total change of, you know, of her voice, the sound of her voice as she turns to him and asks that question. And then of course you get this wonderful lift off of the big melody at the end of the aria. Is the formal you. And this is of course something that we lack in the English language is the distinction between the formal you and the intimate you. And in some ways I’m quite grateful for that 'cause I always find it an absolute minefield socially in France and Germany, you know, going from . But there is, we miss out on something because she’s using the formal you to this young man, but of course, by the end of the act they’ve switched to the intimate and that can be a very lovely moment in a relationship when kind of instinctively you change from the formal you to the intimate you.

• So the other bohemians are waiting, come back and they shout from the street, “What’s going on? what’s keeping you?” And Rodolfo says, “well, I’m not alone actually.” And they were “aha, aha”. So he then says to Mimi, “Do you want to come out to the Latin quarter with me?” And then they launch into this absolutely gorgeous duet with repeats of the tunes that we’ve just heard in the big arias. And we’re going to hear Jussi Bjorling and Victoria de los Angeles. And in this music, the words here are quite conventional. They’re not really so important. I cannot imagine this being better sung by anybody than these two. They just make such lovely sounds in this duet.

• When you get those lovely chromatic, rather Wagnerian harmonies at the end, the delicate question comes up of whether she’s going to return with him and spend the night with him. And then we have a last little section of this duet to end the act. I’m going to play you this in a very famous historic recording with the two singers who probably did more than any others to establish the popularity of “La Boheme”. That’s Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba. Considering all the money that they earned for Puccini, he wasn’t actually very grateful. He didn’t really like either of them very much. In fact, he particularly disliked Nellie Melba, he felt that she was totally unsuited to the role and long before she gave up singing it, he didn’t refer to her by her name in his letters, he just called her the Nonagenarian. But I think it was not so much that she completely lacked the kind of femininity, that he felt a curious mixture of Margaret Thatcher and something not very feminine about her singing. But in one detail she is really, outclasses absolutely everybody. And that, oh, here is Caruso, who famous for his playing outrageous pranks. And although he was constantly teamed with Melba, he found her very irritating because she always insisted on being at Covent Garden anyway, and being paid one pound more than he was. So he did all sorts of dreadful tricks to pay her back. Once, he managed to secrete a hot, greasy sausage in his sleeve. And when he sang, “your tiny hand is frozen”, he thrust it into her hand. So here they are walking off stage and they have to go up to a top C or at least for the tenor, it’s an alternative.

He can go up to this top C or he can go down. I prefer it when tenors don’t go up to the top C because then it becomes rather competitive between the soprano and the tenor and they’ll end up being too loud. So anyway, here Caruso does the gentlemanly thing and he goes down and he lets Melba go up to her top C. And this has simply never been equaled by any other singer on record. Nobody does this top C like Melba. The way she starts the note in the middle and she ends it in the middle. There’s no sense of reaching for it, no sense of effort. This incredible note, I think it’s one of the most beautiful notes on record. It’s just like a beam of light. Act two takes place in the Latin quarter. A very festive mood. It’s very short. It comes in at under 20 minutes. It needs certainly the most elaborate and expensive set of the evening. This is the Julia Trevelyan Oman set at Covent Garden with, I don’t know whether you can see it on the right hand side, on the balcony there’s a billiard table. That always used to fascinate me. I saw La Boheme with this set so many times over the years, over a period of 40 years I suppose. And Musetta in this scene is playing billiards. And it always amazed me that when she hit the ball, it always went into pocket. Until one day I saw a Musetta who missed the ball entirely. And the ball still went into the pockets. The penny finally dropped that the ball was actually pulled in on a string. But, so it starts off with a, Somehow Puccini’s technique here is really quite cinematic. He seems to go backwards and forwards between broad crowd shots with lots of hustle and bustle. And then sudden you get the closeup and he focuses in on the young lovers.

• So at this point we meet a last important new character in the opera, which is Musetta. And she is the proverbial tart with a heart of gold, I suppose. Marcello catches sight of her. They’ve previously had a relationship that was broken about her. Her first name is Musetta. Her second name is Temptation. And she comes in with a rich elderly lover called Alcindoro. But she’s very determined to attract the attention of Marcello and to win him back. And she sings her famous waltz song. And I’m going to play you here another historic recording with the great Spanish mezzo, Conchita Supervia. She took London by storm in the early 1930s. I’ve just actually been reading the autobiography of Miriam Margolyes, which I very strongly recommend you. Great Christmas present, great Christmas read, it’s touching, hilarious, it’s absolutely brilliant, amazing book. And I was fascinated that her mother’s favourite singer was Conchita Supervia She was an adored singer with the London Jewish community. She was adopted as one of them. She married a man called Rubenstein. She converted to Judaism. And my first lecture ever at the London Jewish Cultural Centre, it was about 1990, I played all sorts of famous Jewish singers. But at the end of my lecture I was mobbed by very elderly men all with tears in their eyes, crying, all talking to me about Conchita Supervia. She was the only singer they wanted to talk about. As I said, she won all hearts when she sang in London, sadly died far too early in childbirth. But you can actually see her singing this song, the Musetta’s waltz song on YouTube. She played the role of Musetta in a clip from the opera in the film “Evensong”. So I strongly recommend that you do that. This is a recording she actually made in France. It’s in French rather than in Italian. But she’s always so wonderful with words. I just love the way, you know, she sings “trotting down the street with my head, like with my nose in the air” and how all the men are watching her. “They’re all devouring me with their eyes.”

• I think there is a blend of Maria Callas, Mae West with a touch of Edith Piaf thrown in with that lovely rapid vibrato in her voice, that one critic compared to the sound of a umbrella dragged along park railings. Well I see I’m actually exactly halfway through the opera. I thought this was going to happen. So I’m going to break off here 'cause I can see there are lots of questions and if Wendy will allow me at some point after Christmas, I will devote a talk to acts three and four. So let’s see how the questions and comments-

• Patrick. Patrick-

• The structure of each opera. Sorry.

• Patrick. May I jump in and say thank you for that outstanding, outstanding presentation. It was really superb. And of course with pleasure after Christmas, when you’re ready to continue the presentation, it’s an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Q&A and Comments:

• Well question about musical structure. I’m not really a musicologist, so my approach is not that of a musicologist, but in fact with Boheme, the structure is very interesting 'cause it’s a very tight-knit opera. And it’s often been compared to a symphony, it has something of the unity of a symphony. And the act, the second act of course is rather like a schiazo, lighthearted, rapid. The third act that I’ll talk about next time, it could be described as, it’s wistful and it could be described as the slow movement of a symphony.

My repeatable, you know Barry, yes, you are quite right. I have most of my riposte to people who don’t like Puccini is probably not very repeatable, although I have actually sometimes people have, you know, I’ve started a conversation with people over a dinner party and they say they don’t like Puccini. And I just say to them, “Oh, I thought I was going to like you, but I think perhaps we won’t get on.” 'Cause I really can’t be doing with people who, they’re either snobs or as I said, I think there’s something emotionally wrong with them if you don’t like Puccini.

Q: What age would you take a child?

A: I don’t know. I mean I think it very much depends on the child. You know, there are children who really at a very early age, five or six could go. Don’t take them to see “Parsifal”, don’t take them to see Wagner. “Madame Butterfly”. Well, 15, yeah, probably 15. I wouldn’t take a child of less than 15 to see Butterfly. I’m not sure that they would really get a lot of what is, perhaps they would these days.

Q: Why a French title for an Italian opera?

A: I think it’s because it’s based on, as I said, on a French novel. Although the title of the French novel is.

My family bought the Scala B Company to Johannesburg in the 1950s. Tito Gobbi, that’s no B company. And Gigli. Father and daughter, yes. You know, she was a very lovely singer. Rena Gigli, the daughter of Gigli, she was a good singer, sadly didn’t have a very long career. She shouldn’t have been too old for it. She would’ve been the right age. Amazing staging of Boheme at the Met, Zeffirelli in 1981, 40 years ago. Which they will never replace.

So that’s an interesting question. You know that Covent Garden, I think they have replaced the Trevelyan Oman one now. But Covent Garden has only had three productions in its history. The original production of 1899 lasted until 1973. And I think people become very attached, to a particular production. And I think it’s an opera that doesn’t lend itself well to experimental new productions.

This is Herbert saying he thinks Bjorling does a fabulous job not many who could possibly dispute that. Of course he did have an alcohol problem. You’re quite right. Yes, I agree with you. It couldn’t be better sung. I’m going to talk about this more next time 'cause I’m not going to use him for the final scene 'cause I just don’t feel that he, I think there’s a certain northern European inhibition there that he can’t quite let himself go in the way that Puccini wanted. Bjorling’s is superior to Gigli’s. Possibly, but as I said, the payoff for that is that Gigli, has much more varied expression. Right.

Barry saying he thinks the “Chelida de Mannina” is possibly most divine piece of music ever written. Well I’m not going to quarrel with you about that. A cry baby. Do you know another thing, I dread actually doing the second half of this lecture 'cause I know I’m going to go into floods of tears. I always do that at the end of Boheme. And of course it’s a bit embarrassing. We had 1200 people tonight so I wouldn’t really have wanted to break down and weep in front of 1200 people. But I probably will when I get round to doing it. Afrikaans has similar distinct, I think most languages actually have that distinction between the formal and the intimate you. Monique.

Yes. Magda, that’s her speciality, crescendo innuendo. She’s really unequal at that. Her name Olivero, it’s on the list that you’ve been sent. It’s O L I V E R O. I’m glad you have the cold shivers. I do. I’ll never forget the first time I heard her. It’s one of the really memorable moments of my life. First opera I did, I sobbed hysterically, but he married me anyway. Good, good man. Good man. Yeah, I don’t cry at “Carmen”. “Carmen’s” a masterpiece but it doesn’t make me cry. Vibrato, that’s a question with Magda. I happen to like Italian singers, you know, it’s a Mediterranean thing that strong vibrato but it doesn’t always appeal to Northern Europeans. Somebody’s telling me about a film.

Herbert telling me about a film about Bjorling. Yes. It doesn’t sound like a very happy life. Just as well the British don’t have a distinction between formal and informal. Some of the people would have difficulty in that. I agree with you. Yes. It’s a sign of our probably emotional inhibitions. Which is one reason I think why some British people have a problem with Puccini. I think Italian is definitely the best language to sing in. I’ll never forget Vishnevsky being asked on an interview. What’s the difference between singing opera in Russian and singing in Italian. By this time at the end of her career, she had a rather baritone voice. She said “Singing in Italian, it’s like butter in the throat.” Thanks for your kind wishes. Thank you. Thank you.

Q: Which operatic character would I like to be?

A: Oh dear. Well I can tell you not for 24 hours, but I can tell you there are certain opera characters I would like to sing and there’s some male ones and some female. I’d like to sing “Rigoletto”. I’d love to sing “Rigoletto” and I’d like to sing the Mad Gypsy in “Trovatore”. Actually, I wouldn’t mind singing Tristan or Isolde, either of those two.

Q: How did “Rent” musical obtain plot?

A: I suppose it’s out of copyright.

Czech opera. Yes, I’m going to do Czech opera, that’s planned for the next seasons. I love Czech opera. I’m huge, huge Dvorak, Smetana, all those people. So I’m going to do a presentation on Czech opera. That will be I think probably February or March. Yes. There’s a lot going on in that at two Cafe Murma scene.

Agree about that Miriam Margolyes’ book and you’ve bought, good for you, bought 14 copies. I’m sure, she might be listening to this. I think she’ll be very thrilled to hear that.

This is Joan, she took granddaughter to Boheme, second opera for her, first being Carmen. Carmen’s, you know, not bad alternative. I’m glad that worked. That’s a good idea.

Can you get casting, get listing of all the clips that been, yes, you’ve got it. It’s sent out every time with the PowerPoint. All you have to do is scroll down and open it and download it.

Numerous interpretations of Boheme. Yeah, that sounds fun. You didn’t like Jonathan. I’m not sure if I saw Johnson Millers Boheme.

Yes, Elaine. That’s Miriam Margolyes. It’s a best seller. I think you’ll really enjoy that. Go out with the Beecham “Boheme”. Actually, I don’t think the Beecham “Boheme” was ever issued on 78. Maybe you’re thinking of the Ghili Boheme, that was on 78, ‘cause Beecham was in the 1930s. There’s a Toscanini musical rehearsal of Musettas Waltz song. His singing is really something, isn’t it? And also he’s cursing as you say. Right. Thank you.

I better scroll quickly through these. Yeah, all of you have a wonderful festive season. Look forward to seeing you again in the new year. Hopefully in better times.

Neville, “La Boheme” is intrinsically the great French Opera Chanson in all its forms. So heart moving. Yes, it, it is deeply moving. Yeah. Thank you all. I think I’m getting to the end here. Any other vital questions to answer? I don’t think so. Anyway I better end 'cause we’re running out of time and hope to be able to finish this off after the the new year.

• Thank you.

• Thank you Wendy. Thank you everybody.

• Thanks everyone. Thanks Lauren. Many, many thanks. Have a good holiday weekend. Thank you very much Patrick. Bye.

• Yeah, thank you. Bye-bye.