AS Mimi drifts away into the final coma in the artists' garret, you can hear a pin drop.

There's not a cough nor a yawn to be heard, just the orchestra softly playing some of Puccini's saddest music.

Ellen Kent's Opera International mixes the best of the State Operas of Chisinau and Odessa in the Ukraine to come up with a moving emotional reading of La Boheme.

After Madama Butterfly, La Boheme is Puccini's saddest and most romantic opera and the death of this particular Mimi, beautifully and hauntingly sung by Irina Vinogradova, brought tears to my eyes, and I guess I wasn't alone.

This tale of love and loss among Left Bank artists and artisans in late 19th-Century Paris is told exactly as Puccini wrote it. It begins on a cold Christmas Eve and consumptive Mimi is dead by the spring.

Kent's sets give us the poverty of bedsit Paris, the fun and gaiety of a street cafe dressed en fete for the holiday season and a tearful outdoor confrontation in deep mid-winter with the snow falling and Mimi coughing. There is no updating, no mucking about, just great singing and fine music-making, its four brief acts over in just two hours.

Ukranian-born, Italian-based tenor Ruslan Zinevych is a fine Rodolpho, Petru Racovita an excellent Marcello and Elena Gheman a suitably feisty Musetta.

Conductor Yuriy Holata gets all the ravishing music totally right.

Showing on Saturday, June 10. Call 08700 606650. Opera International also perform Verdi's Rigoletto on Thursday and Friday.