This is about as good as it gets when it comes to a
line-up of a cast for Carmen, even a Spanish-ish conductor and
he gets a good head of steam going in the prelude with later delightful
solo orchestral entr’actes to give the fine orchestra a chance to parade
their fine principal players. As Carmen, Bumbry is (was) amazing, sexy,
seductive, human, vicious, tempestuous - mind you by the end of the
opera and with the likes of that wet blanket Don Jose around her it’s
no wonder that she goes through the whole kaleidoscope of human emotion.
Bumbry does not have that chest voice you love to hate when Callas is
in full cry, the voice is much more beautiful, and she does not really
manage the quick notes in the Gypsy Song. However she and de Burgos
whip it all up into a fantastic fury, castanets purring along like demented
woodpeckers.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Jon Vickers, it all sounds
such a huge effort, but his duet with the deliciously creamy Freni as
Michaela (whose third act aria is beautiful) is really special, and
the end of the so-called Flower Song with its sublimely floated top
B flat (Bizet marks the climb up there with a diminuendo) instead of
the more common scream, is a credit to this great tenor.
Paskalis as the Toreador has all the vocal virility
required for the part from his first entry, and you believe in him,
a credit to his fabulous diction too. This Carmen was recorded
about the time I encountered him (1971/72) when he came to us at Glyndebourne
to sing Macbeth in Verdi’s opera, and a fine singer he was, with tremendous
stage presence. The three ‘L’amour’s at the end of the Toreador’s song
culminating in Bumbry’s contribution which sounds as if she could have
this bullfighter in a paella without it touching the sides, is a brilliant
coup de théâtre. In the card trio Lublin and Cortez
characterise their roles to the full, getting their pennyworth in before
Bumbry completely overshadows them with her aria culminating in those
wonderful death-laden cries of "La mort". Not much of the
chorus’s music is featured here. The boy soldiers have (and seize) their
Act I moment, the rest (not the best music from this wonderful opera)
is the scene-setting opening of Act IV outside the bullring, then, after
Carmen’s death scene (with no scream here though). There is a gripping
build-up from the spiteful rejection by Carmen of the ever-growing,
desperately pleading Jose. Compulsive listening as the venom flies between
them, but great though all the singers are, for my money, the orchestra
shines as much as they do (listen to those unforgettable saxophone-like
sounds of the literally French horns complete wide vibrato in
Freni’s aria). This is one of de Burgos’s best performances, excelling
even the likes of Karajan and Georges Prêtre.
I’m not very keen on bleeding chunks of operatic excerpts
(and EMI do others in this "encore" series such as Mozart’s
Magic Flute and Marriage of Figaro, Verdi’s Aida and
Traviata, and Rossini’s Barber of Seville), but this Carmen
is an exception. If you haven’t got, and don't want to buy, the whole
opera, this will more than suffice.
Christopher Fifield
Chorus and Orchestra
of the Paris Opera