Listening to this is a somewhat Kafkaesque experience – a performance of Carmen, sung in Russian with Don Jose singing in Italian, and occasionally French. Del Monaco was at the height of his fame when he made this guest appearance at the Bolshoi. The audience recognizes him immediately as he comes on stage, and bursts into applause.
Arkhipova was then just on the threshold of her international career – she and del Monaco were reunited in Carmen a year or so later in Naples (a performance under Peter Maag that has also been issued on LP in Italy). Like many other rich-voiced mezzos, she mostly bypasses Carmen’s charm in favour of a vamp-like aggression.
The Russian translation seems to fit Bizet’s music with greater ease than the Italian. When del Monaco and Irina Maslennikova are singing “Parle-moi de ma mere” the clash of different vowel sounds and word-endings creates its own dissonance. Del Monaco came in for such a lot of flack from critics in his own time, but what a good actor he was. When he sings “E bella, Micaela, e sposa mia sara” he can suggest the basic simplicity of Jose’s character. The opera is given with recitatives, of course. Alexander Melik-Pashayev was chief conductor at the Bolshoi throughout the 1950s; his reading is full of drama, but like Arkhipova one feels that his interpretation places Carmen a long way from the Opera-Comique.
This is presumably just one of many operas recorded at this time and now appearing from the Russian radio archives. It is a unique document in its way, instructive to hear for an understanding of what performances were like in Kruschev’s Moscow. Fans of Arkhipova and del Monaco will get a lot of pleasure from it, but those wanting a good mid-price Carmen would be advised to go to Cluytens, Schippers or Karajan.'