The well-tempered prima donna: on May 15, a Met gala celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Mirella Freni's debut. Patrick Giles pays tribute to one of opera's true class acts.

Publication: Opera News

Publication Date: 01-APR-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.

She appeared before the gold curtain, pale, disoriented, wet-eyed, and so exhausted that Luciano Pavarotti did not so much seem to be accompanying her to acknowledge the audience's wild applause as trying to hold her up. It was January 22, 1988--a revival of La Boheme at the Metropolitan Opera. Carlos Kleiber was making his company debut that night, and while his conducting was universally hailed, it wasn't until seconds before Mirella Freni, the evening's Mimi, was due to take her curtain call that the house shifted from appreciation to hysteria.

Freni's shaken appearance caused some to stop shouting and clapping. She seemed to have survived Mimi's death, but just barely. Her head nodded and turned back and forth almost mechanically, her eyes were lowered, she didn't smile or curtsy or wave or blow kisses; she made the absent-minded responses of someone who hadn't quite recovered from what she had just done, which was to sing and act the greatest Mimi many of us had ever...

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