Time Out Ten
Che Gelida Manina
(Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen)
Giacomo Puccini / Bob Rose
For this item you need to be able to stop for ten minutes.
We are often moving on to the next job, the next meeting, scrolling down social media, taking the next call ......'Time Out Ten' asks you to stop for ten minutes and listen to a particular piece of music; to find a time when you won't be interrupted, when you can put in/on your headphones and chill out. Ten minutes isn't long.
To consider Puccini's beautiful aria from La Bohème in terms of jazz might seem like heresy, but good music is good music.
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In the opera, Rodolfo, a poet, lives in an attic with three friends; a painter, a philosopher and Schaunard, a musician. They have little money. One day Schaunard comes home with a payment for some work so Rodolfo's friends go to the pub. Rodolfo stays behind to finish some writing when there is a knock at the door. A neighbour, Mimi, (who we later discover has 'consumption' / tuberculosis) asks for a match to relight her candle. Rodolfo lights it, the candle goes out again and Mimi drops her key. The two search for it in the dark. Rodolfo touches Mimi's hand and the aria begins.
In this jazz video of the aria, Bob Rose plays piano alongside pictures of the sequence. The translation from Italian helps to understand the story and the variety of expression brought to the music:
Many years ago, not long after leaving school, I worked for a while in a prestigious menswear tailors and outfitters shop in London's Savile Row. I had a friend there, Austin, a tenor, who worked there to fund his music studies. The store's overcoat room was on the first floor and there Austin would practice at quiet times. He helped me to listen to Puccini: "Listen to the way Rodolfo sings the second "Cosi" when he is pouring some wine for Mimi" or, "In the aria, at the end, the notes he reaches when he sings "poiché, poiché v'ha preso stanza, la speranza. Or che mi conoscete parlate voi. Deh parlate. Chi siete? Vi piaccia dir?" (the translation: "my dreams of the past, were soon stolen away. But the theft doesn't upset me, since the empty place was filled with hope. Now that you know me, it's your turn to speak. Who are you? Will you tell me?")
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The man who managed the packing department in the shop had a brother who worked at Covent Garden Opera House and he organised for Austin and I to go to La Bohème featuring Victoria de los Ángeles. On the night, Austin was unwell, but I went with my libretto and waited outside stage door afterwards to get Victoria's autograph, but her minders spirited her away. The next week I probably went to hear Sandy Brown's band at the Six Bells in Chelsea.
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Austin recommended that I listen to Jussi Björling singing Rodolfo with Victoria de los Ángeles and Sir Thomas Beecham on record. The reproduction here is not quite as good as from the record itself, but it captures the expression and the timing in the Swedish tenor's interpretation:
© Sandy Brown Jazz 2026.2