Performer: Paul Plishka

Under Andris Nelsons' baton, the musical canvas was remarkably supple with proper light shed on Puccini’s melodic inventiveness and wondrous orchestration.

A terrific cast in the Metropolitan Opera's revival of La bohème... “near the top of a lifetime of Bohèmes” for our reviewer. 

A revival of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 production was graced by an impressive case, including the Met debut of soprano Angel Blue. 

If the painstaking recreation of Rome during the Napoleonic Wars is stripped away from the setting of Tosca. If choral numbers, sparing to begin with, are muted as distant drumbeats. If the title character is reinterpreted as a country girl with little artifice rather than a grand diva whose sheer confidence and sexuality prove irresistible to men.

Read our review of Luc Bondy's production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of Franco Zeffirelli's production of Puccini's La Bohème in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.