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The Prelude to Act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier took Octavian and the Marschallin's love-making to olympic levels

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The Prelude to Act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier took Octavian and the Marschallin's love-making to olympic levels. Her quick reflexes and keen sense of rhythm make for plenty of excitement: forthright orchestral colours, lively inner-part detail. Marie McLaughlin's riotous Musetta has the opposite problem: bags of personality and great instincts - but not too much voice at the present Her support and intonation are plainly hurting. She should take stock before the problems get too firm a grip. She's too big a talent to squander.Otherwise, this serviceable show goes efficiently enough through its paces. I still wonder why our starving Bohemians (well-led by the excellent Anthony Michaels-Moore's Marcello) should sacrifice their last baguette on a bread fight. But it's an episode that the conductor, Simone Young, whips into a frenzy of exuberance dramatically heightening the tactical shock of Musetta's arrival with the dying Mimi Young is a bit of a dynamo.

It's a bracing, open sound with clear potential for heroics but little, as yet, in the way of nuance. He stands squarely in the path of Puccini's most lyric phrases and he delivers. The big notes are fine (this Rodolfo and Mimi both give us the off-stage top C at the close of Act 1); but I would rather he sang with less capital and more interest. Style tends to be an inbred commodity, but maybe it'll come in time. Sometimes she sounds almost reluctant to let the cadence go: and the feeling is mutual. Her Rodolfo, a newcomer to the Opera House, is Johan Botha, a South African, beefy of countenance and voice. It's true that a good producer might focus her stillness and fragility on stage to even greater effect, and persuade her not to signal the emotion quite so "operatically" But the singing. When this Mimi directs her thoughts beyond winter with the words "when the thaw comes, the first sunshine, will be mine", it's not just Gheorghiu's creamy, evenly produced voice, but her mind and spirit that open to the prospect.

She phrases with such musical instinct, shaping, turning, tapering, filling each idea. Her Mimi in the current Royal Opera revival of La Bohme is at that point of development where it is hard to see exactly how it might be improved. Two consumptive heroines in one season: Angela Gheorghiu really cannot go on breaking hearts like this. Hall really wasn't up to them - they needed a singer like Anthony Rolfe Johnson, sweetly lyrical and yet strong. Despite which, there was no denying Lloyd Webber's expertise in a sentimental, sometimes humorous genre. I couldn't remember any of them after one hearing, but at the time their melodies seemed to flow easily and naturally enough.Adrian Jack. Jane Atkins looked very musical, but her under-nourished tone disappeared rather often behind Andrew West's keyboard contribution, considerate though he was.To end the concert, the tenor John Graham Hall struggled bravely to get his voice round six songs, with West giving much-needed support.

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