Summary
"La Boheme is a work of genius, for me it's the perfect opera. There's not a bar or a word or anything you'd want to alter. It just gets to you"
- Opera Director John Copley CBE.
Soul Music ventures back into the Parisian winter of Puccini's beloved 'La Boheme' where legendary Opera Director John Copley CBE reflects on his 40 years of bringing this tale of friendship, love and loss to the stage of London's Royal Opera House.
Alongside his memories of sharing pasta with a young Pavarotti we hear the stories from those whose lives have been touched by - and often reflect - the essence of this most popular of operas.
From the romantic gesture of a probationary constable serenading his soon to be bus conductress wife in 1950's Torquay to the moment that a devoted husband passed away - La Boheme has touched the lives of opera lovers around the world.
Featuring interviews with:
* Author Mavis Cheek * Opera devotees, Ray Tabb and Nancy Rossi
Producer: Nicola Humphries
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2014.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Traitors is back, and so is that mysterious cloaked figure with the familiar fringe. |
| 0:06.6 | Yeah, it's me. |
| 0:07.8 | And when you've watched Claudia in the castle, join me, Ed Gamble, for the official visualised companion podcast. |
| 0:13.6 | And remember, I'll be listening. |
| 0:15.8 | Okay? |
| 0:16.6 | No, seriously, I love it. |
| 0:18.4 | What a faithful. |
| 0:19.7 | We'll unpack betrayals and spill scandalous secrets |
| 0:22.2 | with celeb guests, traitors' legends, |
| 0:25.0 | and murdered and banished players. |
| 0:27.0 | The Traitors Uncloat. |
| 0:28.3 | Watch on EyePlayer, listen for more on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:41.9 | It's the near perfect opera. |
| 0:47.7 | For me, it is the perfect opera, because there's not a bar, |
| 0:51.3 | a word or anything that you want to alter. |
| 0:55.4 | Unlike some operas there, which you want to alter the whole bloody thing. |
| 1:09.6 | It's a life lived right on the edge in Paris, in the cold at Christmas. |
| 1:17.6 | The dynamics, the construction, the imagination, the invention of it, I mean, is phenomenal. La Boem is the quintessential bohemian opera. |
| 1:56.0 | It's set in Paris in the 19th century, amongst the poor artistic community. They live in unheated |
| 2:04.4 | garrets with candles that, as we know, blow out in the wind because the windows don't fit. |
| 2:11.4 | And they have very little in their lives, but the little that they have, they make the most of. |
| 2:15.4 | And some are painters and some are writers. |
... |
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