Bizet: Carmen

This Carmen has Corelli and that is borough. Moffo sounds very good, Helen Donath sounds just like Snow White! The conducting is forceful and gives amplitude to Corelli's ringing tenor voice.The ending is insane and there are better recordings of course, but this CD set must not be overlooked. It was sort of inevitable that Moffo and Corelli (his second Carmen!)would sing this in he studio. They are dynamite.

I have always been curious about this recording of Carmen but avoided it for a long time because as much as I love Anna Moffo, I had a hard time swallowing the idea of her light, milky, lyric-coloratura voice in a mezzo role. Also the scathing albeit well written review from the great music critic Ralph Moore didn't help matters either. However, I recently conducted a mini-survey of her 1970's repertiore (Thais, Debussy and the French Heroines recordings) and was pleasantly suprised at how she could still do wonderful things with her voice even when it began to acquire some rough edges, so in the end I decided to bite the bullet.All I can say is WOW! What a revelation! Moffo IS Carmen!!! She makes the drama real and compelling and gets into the nuts and bolts of the character! Her performance is a lot like Maria Callas in that she uses a wide variety of tonal shadings like a painter mixing colors. Her use of dynamics and portamento fits the music perfectly and her coloratura runs in "Pres dem remparts des Seville" and "Les Triangles des sistres tintaient" are crisp and nimble. Her singing of "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" is one of the finest highlights of the album. She starts out with thin, light, raspy tones and gradually gets louder and more robust then ends the verses in a flourish of chest voice. But she really pulls out the stops in the final scene when she ditches Jose for good--her delivery of the lines "Laisse-moi, Don José, je ne te suivrai pas!" and "Non ! non ! jamais!" will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck! She may not have been the ideal voice for the role, but everything else is so right and spot-on that you don't even care--it is a lesson in musical expression, compelling characterization and Romantic French opera.Franco Corelli is in glorious voice and those of you who say he was just a bellower who couldn't sing below mezzo-forte--listen to the diminuendo on his last phrase and the way he lightens up his spinto voice in the duet with Helen Donath to accomodate her light lyric soprano. Yes, he had a huge, bright, ringing sound but he was also a master musician and knew how to work with co-stars whose voices weren't as robust as his.Helen Donath is the perfect Miceala--a light, sweet voice with a delicate girlish ring at the top. Micaela is the moral compass of the opera so she should sound clear and pure--a foil for the sultry, self-conscious, calculating Carmen--and Donath nails this. In the ending scene where Carmen throws the ring at Jose and says she will live and die a free spirit, I found myself nodding and saying "See Jose? Micaela would never have pulled this kind of crap."So why four stars? Despite the flawless casting, this recording cannot be considered an ideal Carmen due to the bland generic sound of the Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra. It sounds too perfect and squeaky clean like a synthesizer, especially the flutes and strings. Lorin Mazel has to shoulder on some of the blame because frankly he conducts like a robot. He just spits out the music--here's the loud parts, here's the soft parts, here's the dynamics, here's the stringendo and ritardando--without any feeling. Everything is so clear-cut and calculated it never feels natural. However, once you start focusing on the singing, he slowly wears off and becomes tolerable.Even though this recording would have been better if it had been Julius Rudel or Georges Pretre at the baton and a more professional orchesta like the New Philharmonic, London Symphony or London Philharmonic, there is still plenty to admire about it due to the splendid characterizations of Moffo, Corelli and Donath.So while I respectfully beg to disagree with Ralph Moore's guilty verdict, I would still defend his right to express his view as it prompts intelligent debate and thoughtful discussion.Four Stars.

J'aime beaucoup cette version, très vivante. Elle est, à mon sens, trop souvent décriée.La prise de son, déjà, est très belle. Chaque chanteur cherche à créer un personnage, avec plus ou moins de réussite. Moffo n'était plus dans ses meilleurs années mais le charme opère encore (comme pour sa Thaïs enregistrée quelques années plus tard. Son accent est très correct. Corelli a gardé son timbre exceptionnel mais aussi une maîtrise du français pour le moins approximative et son style dans l'opéra français sujet à caution (comme son Faust ou son Roméo). Donath est une source. Cappuccilli est plus banal, un peu égaré sans doute.Et Maazel, dans cet ensemble hétéroclite ? Il fait avancer le drame, de façon bien décousue, mais avec enthousiasme (plus que dans sa seconde version). Au total, un enregistrement plein de défauts, mais diablement attachant.

I cannot believe that Sony has seen fit to re-issue this travesty, my candidate for one of the worst, most unidiomatic opera recordings of all time.Where do I start? Fresh from the delights of Solti's classic 1975 account, I'll begin with Maazel's hopelessly idiosyncratic and inconsistent conducting. He pulls tempi about mercilessly from the absurdly frenetic introduction to the unbelievably turgid accompaniment to Escamillo's "Votre toast". Apart from those singers involved who are actually Francophone, everybody's French is terrible, especially that of Corelli and Cappuccilli and at best, as with the chorus, it sounds like a Berlitz International lesson, stilted and book-learned with no wit or charm. What a relief when van Dam's Zuniga sings and speaks; otherwise the poor remains of dialogue we are permitted are severely mangled, except when we are wrenched from the instantly recognisable voices of the singers to the uncredited actors who say the few words of "mélodrame" left and sound nothing like their singing counterparts.Both principals are well past their prime and wholly out of their depth. Please understand that just as I admire, esteem and cherish certain of Maazel's recordings, I am an equally ardent fan of both Moffo and Corelli but this sorry set should never have been made. Maazel was ever wilful and inconsistent and in this case gets it badly wrong. Moffo is close to voiceless and cannot centre her tone, crooning embarrassingly in an attempt to sound seductive. She was presumably trading upon her legendary comeliness but wherever did the idea come from that Carmen is a role for fading sopranos? Corelli bawls relentlessly, his lisp very much to the fore, sounding as if Turiddu had strayed into Seville. Cappuccilli could hardly sound more unidiomatic, also bawling tonelessly without a hint of the sleek, cruel suavity which the toreador should exude.As Moralès, Barry McDaniel, another singer I generally like, sounds so Anglo-Saxon with his rather white, light, polite tone (yes; I know he's American, but...); compare him with Thomas Allen for Solti and you'll hear the problem. That fine singer Helen Donath is pretty as Micaëla but bland and correct.While there might be a long and honourable tradition of performing "Carmen" in Germany and, especially, Vienna, there is no excuse for this sad mish-mash, cut and truncated, horribly sung and almost unrecognisable as Bizet's Gallic masterpiece.The awfulness of this recording is made all the more incomprehensible by the fact that Maazel's 1982 film soundtrack is amongst the most recommendable.

Die Migenes als Carmen und keine andere ! So muß eine Oper sein ! Immer und immer wieder...... Genuß pur !

Ich hatte schon das LP-Album und wollte es auch auf CD haben. Für meinen Geschmack eine der besten Aufnahmen überhaupt. Domingo überzeugt, Migenes fantastisch. Nur zu empfehlen.

sehr gut angekommen - war ein Geschenk

J'ai commandé ce CD pour remplacer une cassette audio devenue inaudible. Une interprétation de caractère avec J. Migenes! qui me plait beaucoup.

Une Carmen qui a du charme / A Carmen with a lot of charm . The best version / La meilleur version