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Opera Review

Parachuting Into a Garret, and Feeling Right at Home

Sonya Yoncheva as Mimì and Bryan Hymel as Rodolfo in "La Bohème" at the Metropolitan Opera.Credit...Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

In the third act of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” Mimì, the tubercular seamstress, says goodbye. “Addio,” she tells Rodolfo, her poet lover, at the end of the aria “Donde lieta usci,” and then repeats it for emphasis: “Addio, senza rancor.”

Many Mimìs keep this moment simple, singing both iterations of “addio” roughly the same. But at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, the Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva first sang the word in a voice straightforward and resolute, trying desperately to project strength. The second time, she sounded wispy and vulnerable: a poignant revelation of her true feelings.

Subtle, thoughtful and heart-rending, the passage seemed like the work of a veteran artist. But astonishingly, this was Ms. Yoncheva’s first staged performance of the role. Her delicate, dreamy, detailed Mimì has arrived more or less fully formed — and, for good measure, with less than two weeks’ notice and just a month after she gave birth to a son.

The situation was par for the course of Ms. Yoncheva’s nascent Met career. Last year, she made her company debut in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” as a substitute for a pregnant soprano, earning wide acclaim.

Her Mimì is even more impromptu. Ms. Yoncheva was the benefit of what Michael Cooper, writing in The New York Times, has called a “prima donna-mo effect,” replacing Kristine Opolais, who had been called to Munich to replace Anna Netrebko in a new production of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut.” (Got all that?) And in January, Ms. Yoncheva returns to the Met as Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata,” taking over for Marina Poplavskaya, who withdrew from the performances.

Three leading roles, all surprises. Ms. Yoncheva has doubtless been lucky, but she is also the real deal. Her voice is not huge, but her precise articulation of the text and the slightest metallic glisten in her warm tone allow it to penetrate. Her first-act aria built to a gently riveting reverie, and she grew in tragic stature as the opera went on, with her soft-grain echo of Rodolfo’s earlier melody a textbook lesson in tender nostalgia near the end.

The rest of the performance was not at her level. Riccardo Frizza’s conducting was both more harried and, in critical passages, more lethargic than at this revival’s premiere in September. The platinum-tone tenor Bryan Hymel, who sang Rodolfo then, returned on short notice to replace the ill Ramón Vargas on Friday, and sounded freer but thinner. Myrto Papatanasiu remained a squally Musetta.

Newcomers to the cast included the bass David Bizic, a vocally and dramatically bland Marcello; the baritone Alessio Arduini, a youthful Schaunard; and the bass Matthew Rose as Colline. But there was just one star onstage, unexpected though she might have been.

Sonya Yoncheva appears in five more performances of “La Bohème,” through Dec. 5, at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; 212-362-6000, metopera.org.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Parachuting Into a Garret, and Feeling Right at Home. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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