Search - Bizet, Cernay, Berthaud :: Carmen

A Quintessentially French Carmen

Jeffrey Lipscomb | Sacramento, CA United States | 05/05/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This 1942 broadcast performance from Radio Provence is very special. Its assets: a noted French conductor, a very French orchestra & chorus, and an all-French cast. Compare that with just about any stereo Carmen out there: most have a mishmash of accents not unlike a visit to the Tower of Babel. In this Malibran CD set, none of the principals was a big name singer except the Carmen of Germaine Cernay, who was a legendary mezzo-soprano in France (she died the following year at age 43). This is quite simply a wonderful ensemble performance, done in utterly idiomatic fashion, with spoken (not sung) recitatives.



Drawbacks: some cuts, Inghelbrecht's prelude is VERY slow (but not typical of the performance over-all), and the sound is just barely adequate. So this is NOT a recommendation for a basic Carmen. But if you are curious about how a truly French Carmen sounds, this is the best I've come across. I also have the Beecham, where Victoria de los Angeles sounds more like a Mother Superior than a seductive cigarette girl (but it has Gedda, stereo sound, yada yada). I used to own the Stevens/Reiner (my first Carmen, on RCA LPs), the Price/Karajan (with Corelli's unintelligible French), and the Bumbry/de Burgos. I still have the 1927 Perelli/Coppola set on RCA Camden LPs but, helas, the sound is tres ancienne. But this Cernay/Inghelbrecht is the one I will turn to when I want to hear 1) a truly FRENCH account of Bizet's masterpiece, and 2) a version that contains more music than the incomparable excerpts recorded by Conchita Supervia (Pearl).



Highly recommended."