1875 Carmen
18 September 2015 01:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI've just been listening to the LP of the 'recreated' Carmen recording of 1970, which used the original dialogue and restored the sections cut after the first production in 1875 -- while attempting to follow it using the only libretto I own, from the boxed set recorded by Maria Callas which contains the standard grand-opera version with recitative! My French is good enough to enable me to follow the majority of the additional spoken dialogue without the transcript, but as soon as the extra sung sections kick in I can barely catch a word of that: without the record-sleeve summary I wouldn't have had the faintest idea what was going on there :-(
The only significant cut, plot-wise, seems to have been to the knife-fight between José and Escamillo: originally Escamillo beats José easily (which I think, if I understood the snatches of lyric correctly, is attributed to the professional skills of the former as a toreador -- which would make sense) and José, infuriated by his rival's refusal to take the fight seriously, demands a second round which he wins by a fluke when Escamillo slips. In the later version they are evenly matched until Escamillo's accident, which does change the dynamic between the two somewhat.
However, replacing the dialogue by snippets of recitative in order to turn Carmen into a proper 'grand opera' was definitely not to the advantage of the piece, alas. You lose a good deal of characterisation and background information, including various direct references to the original Merimée novel (José's birthplace in Navarre and hence Carmen's attempt to pass herself off as a fellow-countrywoman, the 'escape kit' she provides him with when he goes to jail, and his initial motivation for joining the army thanks to a quarrel over a jeu de paume, for instance). And Dancairo and Remendado turn out to have been intended as a comic double-act, an element totally lost in the solemn recitatives!
One odd thing about this particular recording is the use of a complete second cast for the spoken sections, presumably because the international performers who had been engaged to sing the principal roles (Grace Bumbry, Jon Vickers, Mirella Freni) didn't speak French -- so there's an even greater gap than usual between the singing and speaking voices, and Micaela for one sounds at least ten years younger when she's acting rather than being sung :-p
Jon Vickers as Don José definitely sounds a bit odd even in his sung performance; he is presumably performing phonetically and doesn't seem to realise that accents affect the pronunciation of an E. So, for example, he persists in singing "ma Carmen adorée" as "ma Carmen adorie", pronouncing the double E in English fashion -- distinctly disconcerting if you are reading the lyrics at the time!
Not an outstanding recording musically (though a perfectly adequate one), but definitely worth having heard for the sake of the extra dialogue material. I wish the gatefold had included a libretto at least for the unique 'restored' sections, though... it would have been nice to known exactly what was going on :-p
The only significant cut, plot-wise, seems to have been to the knife-fight between José and Escamillo: originally Escamillo beats José easily (which I think, if I understood the snatches of lyric correctly, is attributed to the professional skills of the former as a toreador -- which would make sense) and José, infuriated by his rival's refusal to take the fight seriously, demands a second round which he wins by a fluke when Escamillo slips. In the later version they are evenly matched until Escamillo's accident, which does change the dynamic between the two somewhat.
However, replacing the dialogue by snippets of recitative in order to turn Carmen into a proper 'grand opera' was definitely not to the advantage of the piece, alas. You lose a good deal of characterisation and background information, including various direct references to the original Merimée novel (José's birthplace in Navarre and hence Carmen's attempt to pass herself off as a fellow-countrywoman, the 'escape kit' she provides him with when he goes to jail, and his initial motivation for joining the army thanks to a quarrel over a jeu de paume, for instance). And Dancairo and Remendado turn out to have been intended as a comic double-act, an element totally lost in the solemn recitatives!
One odd thing about this particular recording is the use of a complete second cast for the spoken sections, presumably because the international performers who had been engaged to sing the principal roles (Grace Bumbry, Jon Vickers, Mirella Freni) didn't speak French -- so there's an even greater gap than usual between the singing and speaking voices, and Micaela for one sounds at least ten years younger when she's acting rather than being sung :-p
Jon Vickers as Don José definitely sounds a bit odd even in his sung performance; he is presumably performing phonetically and doesn't seem to realise that accents affect the pronunciation of an E. So, for example, he persists in singing "ma Carmen adorée" as "ma Carmen adorie", pronouncing the double E in English fashion -- distinctly disconcerting if you are reading the lyrics at the time!
Not an outstanding recording musically (though a perfectly adequate one), but definitely worth having heard for the sake of the extra dialogue material. I wish the gatefold had included a libretto at least for the unique 'restored' sections, though... it would have been nice to known exactly what was going on :-p
