Search - Georges Bizet, Bruno Amaducci, L'Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Francaise :: Bizet: Le docteur Miracle

Right now, it's the only Docteur in the house...

Peter Hilliard | Roslyn, PA United States | 04/16/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a decent recording, for the most part, and there is no other commercially available Docteur Miracle out there, so it's a good bet. The score is frothy and delightful, well orchestrated, and easy on the ears. Don't miss the Omlet Quartet, which is a funny and winning number if there ever was one. If you're looking for obscure operas, you probably already know the pluses and minuses of opera d'oro recordings. They usually sound like they're recorded from inside a trenchcoat, but they're about a quarter of the price of studio recordings. This is a broadcast recording from the seventies, so the quality is pretty good, although in several places, it becomes inexplicably very very poor. It's almost as though they took out all the treble in some spots just to remind you that you only paid $9 for it. Other weird spots include the omission of the first 30 or 40 bars of the overture(it sounds a little like a fade in) and some cuts here and there that don't seem entirely necessary (maybe they were trying to keep the time down) Also, be aware that this is an opera comique, so there's spoken French dialogue, and spoken by actors. I don't know how the singers would have been at reading these lines, so I can't tell whether this is a blessing or not, but I can tell you that the actors sound very little like the singers, which is a little off-putting. When you hear this score, you will wonder why nobody has ever released a commercial digital recording. Maybe now somebody will."