http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/arts/music/zeffirellis-la-bohme-resumes-at-the-met.html 2014-09-26 01:11:19 Zeffirelli’s ‘La Bohème’ Resumes at the Met The Metropolitan Opera’s performances of Franco Zeffirelli’s “La Bohème” resumed on Tuesday with a fresh cast configuration. === The Metropolitan Opera’s production of “La Bohème,” Puccini’s masterpiece of emotional manipulation, is like any institution: it transcends the people, good or bad, who move through it. Before Puccini’s score also casts its spell and draws laughter and tears regardless of who’s on stage, which is not to say that “La Bohème” doesn’t benefit from cultivation and care. On Tuesday evening, both qualities were present, above all in the pit, where Riccardo Frizza conducted an alert, polished, propulsive orchestral performance, bracingly savage when the landlord Benoit entered in Act I and tenderly evocative as Mimì died, with translucent, hovering muted strings. Once past Rodolfo’s daunting first-act aria, “Che gelida manina,” which he negotiated with some tightness, the rising tenor Mr. Hymel’s manner, distant at the start of the opera, gained energy and charm as the performance went on, becoming ardent by his third-act exhortations to Mimì and affectingly offhand in “O Mimì tu più non torni,” his duet with Marcello in the fourth act. Burly and imposing, with a lively, rumbling voice, the baritone Quinn Kelsey was unusually mature-seeming as Rodolfo’s best friend: Marcello as Falstaff. The baritone Alexey Lavrov was a wry and resonant Schaunard, and the bass David Soar a confident Colline, mellow and unpretentious in his fourth-act aria, “Vecchia zimarra.” The two soprano leads were less satisfying, with Myrto Papatanasiu, in her Met debut, a penetrating yet shrill Musetta. Worse was Ekaterina Scherbachenko’s sour tone and bland presence as Mimì. On Thursday the Met announced that Ms. Scherbachenko was ill and would be replaced in Friday and Monday’s performances by