Whatever reservations I may have about the performances of some of the principals, this recording confirms the work as an outright masterpiece. Its strength lies in having a French orchestra and chorus, French singers in subsidiary roles, an edition that employs dialogue and, with one exception, makes a sensible choice from the Oeser revisions, and has Erik Smith as producer. There is no substitute for the sound of French artists singing and speaking their own language, few substitutes for French players tackling their country's music. Their conductor isn't French but Ozawa, by and large, shows a fine feeling for the niceties of Bizet's scoring and rhythms. Erik Smith, as ever, places the singers in the forefront, avoiding the curse of recessed sound, and yet suggests the ambience of a real occasion.
So the frame is right for Jessye Norman's much-heralded Carmen. How does she fill it? With predictable intelligence, involvement and musicality. To start with, her French is idiomatic. She may be a shade too emphatic in some of the dialogue in an effort to create a 'character', but create one she does mostly by dint of her singing. The ''Habanera'' is as smoky and alluring as Leontyne Price's on the Karajan/RCA set, the ''Seguidille'' suitably seductive. In both she lightens her tone effectively without damaging its quality. The ''Chanson bohemienne'' has suitable fire, the duet with Jose a nice mixture of eroticism combined with irony—the repeat of Jose's phrase early on, one of the Oeser additions first heard on the Solti set, helps her here. With the card scene, we return to the heavier, more portentous Norman style I'm not sure that the piece should be quite so Wagnerian as this—and the tempo, as that for the ''Habanera'', is just a touch too slow.
I like the sensual vibrato she brings to ''Ah! je t'aime'', and in the mortal encounter with Jose Norman's Carmen rightly assumes tragic proportions, even if the style is again a shade grand for this piece. All in all it is a convincing well-thought through portrayal. If Norman isn't a 'natural' for the part as are, in their different ways, Berganza for Abbado (DG), Migenes for Maazel (Erato/ RCA) and Troyanos for Solti (Decca), she is in her very different way as interesting as los Angeles (Beecham/EMI) and Callas (Pretre—also EMI), and quite as individual in utterance as either.
I am not so happy about the supporting principals. Shicoff sings a sound, standard-tenor Jose but he is not very imaginative in his phrasing and hardly uses the words at all. He manages a fine ppp at the close of the duet with Micaela, but ends the Flower Song in a mezzo forte. He has the strength for his Act 3 outburst and creates the required tension in the desperate denouement (I am sorry Ozawa here adopts the additional bars in Oeser which always seem de trop). Domingo in any of his three performances (for Maazel, Solti and Abbado) is preferable in this style of Jose: Gedda (Beecham) is, of course, something else again. Simon Estes's Escamillo is a sad disappointment: his French, sung and spoken, is truly appalling and he has trouble dragging his heavy voice through Bizet's light-grained music so that his pitch often falters. He is no match for van Dam (Karajan) or Blanc (Beecham). I wonder why Philips did not cast Alain Fondary, whose base is in Paris, where this set was made, in this part? At the Earl's Court performances in London he sounded the ideal Toreador. As Micaela, Freni is up against her young self in the Karajan/RCA set. Unfortunately, by comparison, her voice now sounds too heavy for the role, and it has begun to acquire an intrusive beat. Even so, her account of her aria is still superior to that of most other Micaela's on disc except her own.
As I have suggested, all the small roles are well taken by French singers, each of whom has a good voice and characterizes subtly, especially Le Roux as Dancairo, and even the speaking roles offer individuality of utterance. The chorus lend distinction to the performance—the women really get round the text of the cigarette girls' quarrel, which Ozawa takes at quite a pace. That is in contrast with some plodding tempos. The Micaela/Jose duet sounds rather foursquare at Ozawa's rigid pace, and the close of Act 3 wants the frisson of excitement suggested by Jose's entry into a new life, but Ozawa's care for detail and his control of the outdoors scenes are always admirable. I'm glad he adopts the longer version of the duel music, and the additional bars in the Act 3 finale. Indeed, although the dialogue is different, he very much follows the version used by Solti on the stilladmirable Decca set.
My preference for the varying pleasures of the Maazel, Abbado and Beecham sets remains, but I have nevertheless enjoyed Norman's highly individual portrayal and the French aspects of this new one.'