Bizet Carmen
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Georges Bizet
Genre:
Opera
Label: DG
Magazine Review Date: 10/1983
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 3382 025
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Carmen |
Georges Bizet, Composer
Agnes Baltsa, Carmen, Mezzo soprano Alexander Malta, Zuniga, Bass Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Christine Barbaux, Frasquita, Soprano Georges Bizet, Composer Gino Quilico, Dancaïre, Tenor Heinz Zednik, Remendado, Tenor Herbert von Karajan, Conductor Jane Berbié, Mercedes, Soprano José Carreras, Don José, Tenor José Van Dam, Escamillo, Baritone Katia Ricciarelli, Micaëla, Soprano Mikael Melbye, Morales, Baritone Paris Opera Chorus Schöneberg Boys' Choir |
Composer or Director: Georges Bizet
Genre:
Opera
Label: DG
Magazine Review Date: 10/1983
Media Format: Vinyl
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 2741 025
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Carmen |
Georges Bizet, Composer
Agnes Baltsa, Carmen, Mezzo soprano Alexander Malta, Zuniga, Bass Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Christine Barbaux, Frasquita, Soprano Georges Bizet, Composer Gino Quilico, Dancaïre, Tenor Heinz Zednik, Remendado, Tenor Herbert von Karajan, Conductor Jane Berbié, Mercedes, Soprano José Carreras, Don José, Tenor José Van Dam, Escamillo, Baritone Katia Ricciarelli, Micaëla, Soprano Mikael Melbye, Morales, Baritone Paris Opera Chorus Schöneberg Boys' Choir |
Author: Alan Blyth
We have, paradoxically, been lucky and unlucky in recent years with recordings of Carmen. Every performance in the catalogue has something to commend it; none has been quite an outright recommendation, though the two most recent, listed above, came in many respects near to enjoying that accolade. With a piece so notoriously difficult to bring off in the theatre, perhaps it is no surprise that the ideal is also so elusive on disc. Now DG enter the lists, in both senses, once more, with a rival to that company's own splendid Edinburgh Festival orientated Abbado version of five years ago. The differences between them are remarkable.
Perhaps they can most graphically be adumbrated by reference to theFirst Act melodrame followed by Carmen's Seguedille. At once we note Karajan being more leisurely, more sensuous than Abbado, the older conductor drawing the most sensuous playing, as throughout, from his favourite orchestra. Then we realize that he has actors, regrettably, speaking the dialogue rather than the singers and that, after the melodrame, he includes much more of the speech than Abbado, Karajan obviously aware of its importance in filling out story and characterization, and he is even more generous in his respect than Solti.
When we reach the Seguedille itself, the contrast between Baltsa and Berganza is quite startling. Baltsa (so unforgettable in the part at Covent Garden last March) adopts a much more languorous manner, eliding notes, taking little notice of the marcato injunction for ''J'irai danser'', etc. Her tone is wantonly seductive. When she reaches the second verse, she punches it out with almost brazen femininity, a free spirit here indeed, and a somewhat wild one just as she portrayed Carmen in the opera house. Berganza is more elegant, more musically scrupulous and, perhaps surprisingly, more communicative with the text, and she certainly doesn't indulge herself, as does Baltsa, with an intrusive, unwanted high A at the start of the reprise.
Both seem to me valid assumptions; both have more character than Troyanos's correct but rather anonymous assumption for Solti on Decca. The differences continue in the Card Scene, Baltsa more melodramatic in her cries of ''Carreau'', ''Pique'', more smoky and seamless in her vocalization, Berganza more subtle in her colouring and weighting of words. In the finale that ''full force of a dramatic mezzo'' I found missing in Berganza's rendering is present in Baltsa's. Carmen's final Line: ''tu me L'avais donnee'' may decide you: Baltsa's spat out defiantly, with a melodramatic shriek on the following ''Tiens!'', Berganza almost chilling in her comparative restraint. Much more of the gipsy and the femme fatale in Baltsa's interpretation, more of the carefree, slightly humorous lover in Berganza's.
Karajan is said to have waited to record another Carmen until he found his ideal interpreter. His view of the score certainly accords with hers. He partners her with alternating sensuality and fire, the accompaniments at times smouldering dangerously, as in the Habanera, at others breaking out into dramatic splendour, almost larger than life. Tempos, as is his wont these days in opera, are on the slow side: Danse bohemienne, Quintet and Toreador's Couplets are examples of this tendency, but the extra space is usually employed profitably to benefit Bizet's orchestration. The whole interpretation is more obvious, more underlined than Abbado's, also less taut, less aristocratic. Karajan appreciates the lighter side of the work more surely than Abbado, but for my taste it is the Italian who gives us something closer to an immediate, theatrical experience. Maybe Karajan's reading is fit more for a large, spacious theatre such as Salzburg's Grosses Festspielhaus, Abbado's for the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, where it originated, and their respective engineers emphasize the point. The BPO's playing is the more refined, imbued with warmth, the LSO's leaner.
As for poor Jose, Carreras, as on stage, Achieves the soldier's downfall with heartbreaking feeling in his tense, slightly lachrymose singing. His Flower Song, ending with a marvellous pp high B flat, is a thing of light and shade, finely shaped, not quite idiomatically French, either in verbal or tonal accent, but very appealing, his final scene properly desperate. Domingo, for both Abbado and Solti, is just as involved. If he is more generalized in his interpretation than Carreras, his is the vocally more secure performance, sometimes Caruso-like in impact for Abbado.
Van Dam, a shade less happy with his high Es and Fs than he was for Solti, remains the Escamillo of our day, at once preening and passionate, vocally alluring, in a way Milnes (Abbado) could not manage with his thinner, less certain tone. Ricciarelli is a droopy-sounding Micaela in the duet, but improves for her aria, though all through defeated by the French language. Cotrubas (Abbado) and Te Kanawa (Solti) though neither ideally idiomatic, are closer to the meaning of the part in their different ways.
In the new set the smaller parts are no more than adequately taken, but Karajan scores over his rivals by wisely choosing a French chorus, who tend to show up the mixed accents round them. As I have implied the speaking voices come nowhere near their singing counterparts, and the actors, as ever when this system is used, sound, well, 'actorish'. Karajan goes for most of the Oeser options, as did Abbado, but improves on Abbado by giving us the full version of the jose/Escamillo duet in Act 3, and he practically always justifies the extra bits of music by the colour he brings to them—though I'm sure Solti was right to go for the briefer Choudens in the passage after the Habanera and in a couple of other places, Bizet obviously attenuating his score in the interest of the drama.
In sum, Karajan gives us a marvellous panorama of the work, a sophisticated traversal of the piece that doesn't exclusive a realization of its more intimate side, a view much to be preferred to his older 1964 recording with the wayward but often arresting Leontyne Price (RCA SER5600, 11/71). By its side Solti sounds a bit stiff and uncommitted. Not so Abbado, whose more direct methods and lack of histrionics I still find truthful and immediate. Which doesn't mean that I won't want to listen to Karajan and, above all, Baltsa when I'm the mood for something bigger in scale, and an elegance and polish only found elsewhere in Beecham's old version.'
Perhaps they can most graphically be adumbrated by reference to the
When we reach the Seguedille itself, the contrast between Baltsa and Berganza is quite startling. Baltsa (so unforgettable in the part at Covent Garden last March) adopts a much more languorous manner, eliding notes, taking little notice of the marcato injunction for ''J'irai danser'', etc. Her tone is wantonly seductive. When she reaches the second verse, she punches it out with almost brazen femininity, a free spirit here indeed, and a somewhat wild one just as she portrayed Carmen in the opera house. Berganza is more elegant, more musically scrupulous and, perhaps surprisingly, more communicative with the text, and she certainly doesn't indulge herself, as does Baltsa, with an intrusive, unwanted high A at the start of the reprise.
Both seem to me valid assumptions; both have more character than Troyanos's correct but rather anonymous assumption for Solti on Decca. The differences continue in the Card Scene, Baltsa more melodramatic in her cries of ''Carreau'', ''Pique'', more smoky and seamless in her vocalization, Berganza more subtle in her colouring and weighting of words. In the finale that ''full force of a dramatic mezzo'' I found missing in Berganza's rendering is present in Baltsa's. Carmen's final Line: ''tu me L'avais donnee'' may decide you: Baltsa's spat out defiantly, with a melodramatic shriek on the following ''Tiens!'', Berganza almost chilling in her comparative restraint. Much more of the gipsy and the femme fatale in Baltsa's interpretation, more of the carefree, slightly humorous lover in Berganza's.
Karajan is said to have waited to record another Carmen until he found his ideal interpreter. His view of the score certainly accords with hers. He partners her with alternating sensuality and fire, the accompaniments at times smouldering dangerously, as in the Habanera, at others breaking out into dramatic splendour, almost larger than life. Tempos, as is his wont these days in opera, are on the slow side: Danse bohemienne, Quintet and Toreador's Couplets are examples of this tendency, but the extra space is usually employed profitably to benefit Bizet's orchestration. The whole interpretation is more obvious, more underlined than Abbado's, also less taut, less aristocratic. Karajan appreciates the lighter side of the work more surely than Abbado, but for my taste it is the Italian who gives us something closer to an immediate, theatrical experience. Maybe Karajan's reading is fit more for a large, spacious theatre such as Salzburg's Grosses Festspielhaus, Abbado's for the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, where it originated, and their respective engineers emphasize the point. The BPO's playing is the more refined, imbued with warmth, the LSO's leaner.
As for poor Jose, Carreras, as on stage, Achieves the soldier's downfall with heartbreaking feeling in his tense, slightly lachrymose singing. His Flower Song, ending with a marvellous pp high B flat, is a thing of light and shade, finely shaped, not quite idiomatically French, either in verbal or tonal accent, but very appealing, his final scene properly desperate. Domingo, for both Abbado and Solti, is just as involved. If he is more generalized in his interpretation than Carreras, his is the vocally more secure performance, sometimes Caruso-like in impact for Abbado.
Van Dam, a shade less happy with his high Es and Fs than he was for Solti, remains the Escamillo of our day, at once preening and passionate, vocally alluring, in a way Milnes (Abbado) could not manage with his thinner, less certain tone. Ricciarelli is a droopy-sounding Micaela in the duet, but improves for her aria, though all through defeated by the French language. Cotrubas (Abbado) and Te Kanawa (Solti) though neither ideally idiomatic, are closer to the meaning of the part in their different ways.
In the new set the smaller parts are no more than adequately taken, but Karajan scores over his rivals by wisely choosing a French chorus, who tend to show up the mixed accents round them. As I have implied the speaking voices come nowhere near their singing counterparts, and the actors, as ever when this system is used, sound, well, 'actorish'. Karajan goes for most of the Oeser options, as did Abbado, but improves on Abbado by giving us the full version of the jose/Escamillo duet in Act 3, and he practically always justifies the extra bits of music by the colour he brings to them—though I'm sure Solti was right to go for the briefer Choudens in the passage after the Habanera and in a couple of other places, Bizet obviously attenuating his score in the interest of the drama.
In sum, Karajan gives us a marvellous panorama of the work, a sophisticated traversal of the piece that doesn't exclusive a realization of its more intimate side, a view much to be preferred to his older 1964 recording with the wayward but often arresting Leontyne Price (RCA SER5600, 11/71). By its side Solti sounds a bit stiff and uncommitted. Not so Abbado, whose more direct methods and lack of histrionics I still find truthful and immediate. Which doesn't mean that I won't want to listen to Karajan and, above all, Baltsa when I'm the mood for something bigger in scale, and an elegance and polish only found elsewhere in Beecham's old version.'
Bizet Carmen
Bizet Carmen
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
Subscribe
Gramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.