La Boheme is one of the most beautiful opera’s concerning love, death and pure sadness. It is one of those operas where one audience members are in tears in the first bar or so, that is if they know how the opera ends. And the gorgeous score by Puccini is to thank for that. The finale to act 3 and Mimi’s death are two of the most heart-rending scenes in the whole of opera history. In my opinion, few people can sing or play Mimi and Rodolfo better than Mirella Freni and Luciano Pavarotti. The two are incomparable. They are simply the quintessential example of operatic excellence. Recently I had the pleasure of listening to the young Tamara Radjenovic sing “Mi chiamano Mimi” from La Boheme. She was flawless in vocal quality and presence. Hardly has a soprano – outside of Freni to my mind – captured the essence or soul of Mimi as beautifully and gracefully as the young Montenegrin opera singer.
A truly signature role, Mimi is performed by Radjenovic, with a voice that carries drama as well as innocence, the perfect blend for the perfect Mimi. It reminds one what opera is all about – passion and beautiful singing. Of course another thing Tamara shares with Mirella is her physical beauty.
It’s not a defining quality in the operatic arts, but it’s definitely an unusual one that smashes the clearly sexist, and moreover outmoded thinking, in a genre where we’re used to hearing about the stereotyped ‘fat lady’ singing. The days of having large girths or imposing statures is casually giving way to singing divas who could easily compete with sexy Top 40 pop stars of our time.
More importantly though, Tamara Radjenovic has a clarity of tone that is beautiful to hear, while she blends and balances her timbre perfectly. She is at once urgent, compelling and, above all, believable, as her voice soars along the top of her range. She articulates her notes so naturally that one can only applaud her exceptional authority and insight.
And at her age that is an extraordinarily precocious quality. All-round Tamara is a resourceful singer – one of formidable expressive power and scrupulous musicianship. The depth of feeling she puts into her performances cannot leave an audience unmoved.
Tamara Radjenovic and Friends, will be at the Carnegie Hall on Saturday, September 22, 2018 at 8 PM. They will be performing works by Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, Verdi, Delibes, Guastavino, Obradors, Lara, Sorozabal, Gounod, Penella and Donaudy. I doubt this is something you would want to miss!
MORE ABOUT: Twenty-three year-old soprano, Tamara Radjenovic is a rising opera singer with origin from Montenegro. Playing the piano from the age of 6, Tamara has always been musically inclined. She recently graduated from the Royal College of Music, in London Voice Performance and was awarded a scholarship to complete her Master’s degree at the same college. Tamara has performed in different international and national projects, festivals, and master classes, as well as competitions in Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Austria, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Mauritius. Tamara cooperates with the diva Montserrat Caballe and performed twice in her gala concerts in Spain. Her operatic debut was last summer at the Mediterranean opera festival in Sicily, where performed Mimi in La Boheme. She will make her debut in the United States at the Carnegie Hall in New York during September.
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