Search - Kostas Paskalis, Georges Bizet, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos :: Bizet: Carmen

Bizet Carmen - Opera Comique Version - A Golden Voiced cast

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 08/10/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This will be a very brief review, the bottom line being: Get this set now while it is still available. It comes and goes from catalogues.



This is the Opera Comique version that includes spoken dialogue, not the later sung recitatives added for the full grand stage in Vienna about 1875 by, I seem to recall, Ernest Guiraud. Believe it or not the stuffy Paris Opera did not do the work until much later, 1959, with President De Gaulle sitting in the audience at the belated premiere.



Now I have always had a mixed reaction to the full grand opera version and to Guiraud's recitatives, so I took to the Opera Comique edition right away. I do believe the performers still have made some cuts, so this is not the utterly complete musical Carmen that Sir Georg Solti used to showcase his Tatiana Troyanos in the title role.



The stars here are the key singers and the orchestra in equal merit and balance. Compare, say, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos' more colorful and alert leadership with, say, Seiji Ozawa in the set with Jesseye Norman doing Carmen, or with Maazel in the otherwise wonderful film soundtrack, Domingo partnering Julia Migenes. Ozawa and Maazel simply settle for run of the mill competence, nothing exactly wrong yet nothing spectacularly right either. While in this outing Fruhbeck de Burgos really partners with his singers, solo and ensemble.



Grace Bumbry makes a sensual and alluring Carmen, feisty as Julia Migenes, and enough contralto/mezzo cream in her voice to give Godiva truffles a cocolat run for the money. Canadian tenor Jon Vickers pours out unfailing silver, gold, and something like stainless steel at times, but always in the right places and always in character as the conflicted Don Jose who cannot seem to stop going downhill. Micaela is taken by Mirella Freni, so what more could this character want? Kostas Paskalis reminds this listener of the young American Robert Merrill - yes we could accuse him of under-acting the part, but given this richness of voice with its sheer baritonal depths, why not offer the singer the benefit of a doubt and chalk it up to the sort of suave, smooth bravado that does not have to seem to be trying all that hard to strike its expert toreador poses and whirls, all public, impeccably suited?



The rest of the cast is solid to my ears. So although the principals are truly outstanding, the banditos have enough vocal heft to carry off their big ensemble moments, mainly when recruiting Don Jose to the free life in the culmination scene at Lillas Pastias, and then in the mountains where smuggling and rivalry/jealousy portend Carmen's dire fate, just as she realizes in the card scene aria.



This performance was a winner when first released, and it is still a winner now. Maybe nothing released to date will quite displace the famous Victoria de los Angeles Carmen conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham on EMI, maybe never will. But this reading reaches high indeed, and will wear beautifully for long years of hearing nonetheless.



Okay, gotta go. Buy this set now, unless you are broke or saving up the rent money on a student share of a crammed apartment. Five stars."