The pre-overture prelude in the Francesco Rosi film of Carmen is enough to turn anyone into an animal rights activist. It’s the end of a bullfight, the bull is dying and Escamillo moves in for the kill with the pretentious bravado that makes the whole situation seem senseless. More pungent glimpses of 1820s Spain set the scene for a world where murder and love are closely intertwined.

Shot on location, the 1984 film is a traditional Carmen with medium-gritty realism: in the title-role, for example, Julia Migenes is indeed alluring – her only screen rival in this role is Elı¯na Garan∂a (DG) – but declined to shave her armpits. When first released, this film was an iconic Carmen and remains so. One can’t help dreaming about how much better it would be with 21st-century technology allowing opera casts to sing on camera rather than taxing the film’s veracity with unconvincing lip-syncing. Anticipating this problem, Rosi favours medium-range shots, letting the soundtrack deliver the music’s side of the story while he delivers visually articulate screen pictures. More ingeniously, the opera’s story-telling is translated, often seamlessly, into cinematic narrative. Musical reprises that might work against that are heard but not seen because the camera has gone on to set up the next scene. More poetically, Micaëla sings her Act 3 aria in a deep canyon, the second strophe played as a mutated echo of the first.

Even with ideas that misfire and some strangely clumsy blocking, so much of the film is so right. Even Domingo’s wooden screen presence creates a telling contrast between uptight Don José and Migenes’s physically fluid, self-assured Carmen, projecting her character’s alpha qualities without any of the calculation of Anne-Sofie von Otter (Opus Arte). In fact, Migenes, who retrained her coloratura soprano into a more honeyed sound, tends to be inviting and playful until the seriousness of Act 3 sets in. Then, Rosi reveals Carmen to be as weary and disappointed, in her way, as Don José. Ruggero Raimondi is a suitably commanding Escamillo and, though neither he nor Domingo have the screen mastery seen more recently in the Rigoletto in Mantua film by Andrea Andermann, they’re both in peak vocal form. Faith Esham’s Micaëla is effortlessly lyrical and creates an endearing, determined counterpoint to the more complicated Carmen.