Having already issued Karajan's version of Carmen complete on CD, DG might have given a break to the preferable Abbado set in their LP catalogue, and let us have had extracts from that, or better still the whole performance. Those who admire Karajan's less idiomatic, big-scale account of the work will probably have acquired it in its entirety on CD already. For anyone wanting just highlights, they are all here on this generously filled disc. The dialogue, its least satisfactory element, is here kept to a minimum and we have plenty of Baltsa's highly charged, vivid gipsy heroine and of Carreras's sympathetic, eloquent Jose, both characterizations among the most telling on any form of disc.'