Duet from Act 4 of La Boheme
TENOR: Good evening. I'm Philip Sheffield.
BARITONE: I'm Jeremy Huw Williams.
PIANIST: And I'm Michael Pollock.
TENOR: And we'd like to welcome you to our world.
BARITONE: A world of good and evil.
TENOR: Dreaming and scheming.
PIANIST: Singing and swinging.
BARITONE: A world of brothers and fathers.
TENOR: Sons and lovers.
PIANIST: Beauty and bestiality.
BARITONE: Yes, it's the world of tenors and baritones which we, for reasons known only to ourselves, have chosen to call Bravo.
PIANIST: Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an evening of arias, duets and songs from some of opera's best-known and most enduring classics. But with a difference.
TENOR: No girls.
BARITONE: Just us boys.
TENOR: One tenor.
BARITONE: One baritone.
PIANIST: And one hell of a pianist.
TENOR: It's a bit like The Three Tenors.
BARITONE: Except there's only two of us.
TENOR: And only one of us is a tenor.
PIANIST: And there's a pianist.
BARITONE: Instead of a seventy-piece orchestra.
TENOR: What you just heard was the duet, Ah, Mimi, tu piu non torni, from Act Four of Puccini's opera, La Boheme, in which the poet Rudolfo and the painter Marcello bemoan their newly-found state of bachelorhood.
BARITONE: It's a beautiful example of how tenor and baritone voices blend with and complement one another. And the operatic repertoire is rich in this velvety combination.
TENOR: Yes. And over the next four or five hours, we'll be up in the operatic attic, rifling through old trunks jam packed with wonderful objets trouvés.
JBARITONE: Some familiar to you.
TENOR: Some unfamiliar.
PIANIST: Even to us.
BARITONE: Yes, indeed. We'll be raiding the musico-dramatic larder for a veritable vocal midnight feast.
TENOR: Some of it light and fluffy.
BARITONE: Some of it extremely rich and filling.
MP: But all of it indescribably mouth-watering.
TENOR: What is and who is a tenor?
BARITONE: Indeed. And more importantly, what and who is a baritone?
TENOR: Well, a tenor, according to one commentator, is a singer whose heart is on his sleeve and whose brains are in his boots.
BARITONE: He sings high, he dreams deep.
TENOR: He is a poet, a hero ...
BARITONE: … and a fop. A baritone, on the other hand, may be said to have his heart in his trousers and his brains not far behind.
TENOR: His voice is like chocolate, his gait is like a tiger.
BARITONE: He is virile, seductive, sensual …
TENOR: ... and a cheat, a scoundrel and a philanderer.
