This is one of those operas that never can fail. There are not many of them, and two of the others are Bizet's "Carmen" and Verdi's "La Traviata", but Puccini's most popular opera is something different, all verist and revolutionary in some ways, especially considering the second act, the mass scene at the Café Momus in Paris. Puccini made his operas more than their underlying literary works, giving his ladies a finer lustre than their authors ever gave them. That's the general tendency in all of Puccini's operas, like *Manon Lescaut' (totally different from all previous 'Manon Lescauts'), Tosca (making a scenic actress a superstar), 'Madame Butterfly' turning a poor young unsuspecting geisha into a divine heroine, and in 'Turandot', ruining and bringing down the great all powerful Chinese princess by presenting the poor slave girl Liú as a much nobler and more sincere character. Mimi in 'La Bohème' crushed everyone's hearts from the beginning, and she has never ceased to do so. It is one of the universally most loved operas ever, and here it is performed in San Francisco with an almost entirely Italian cast, doing it thoroughly justice, with also a very young and brilliant Italian conductor, Tiziano Severini. Of course, Mirella Freni brings home the prize, and she is always overwhelming in sincerity. It's difficult to think that this opera could be given a better performance.
