Tatiana_Troyanos

Help! So many Carmen’s! Which one is a real must have?

Poster of the première in 1875

In prehistoric times, when ratings alone were not everything and cultural-loving audiences were still taken into account, television-watching opera lovers also came into their own.

Illustration of Bizet’s opera Carmen, published in Journal Amusant, 1875. The image, held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is marked “domaine public”

I never used to like opera. I loved violin concerts and piano solo works, very early on I learned to appreciate chamber music and when I got a bit older, songs also came my way. But opera? The mere idea that an old, fat lady would try to portray a young girl dying of TB, gave me the giggles. Talk about prejudice!

DVD’S

Until one memorable evening in 1982, when I turned on the TV to watch Carmen. I only did it to please my then boyfriend and then it happened! From that night on, the world was forever changed and my life gained a great love.

For years I cherished this Carmen, although I only had a badly copied but very expensive mc (does anyone remember what it was?). It was later released on various ‘pirate labels’ and finally on DVD (Arthaus Musik 109096).


ANNA CATERINA ANTONACCI, KAUFMANN AND PAPPANO




Something similar happened to me in 2011, when the BBC brightened up a dull Christmas afternoon with an opera transmission from London’s Covent Garden. Orchestrally, this Carmen is slightly less spectacular than Kleiber’s. Antonio Pappano is an impassioned conductor and whips up the Royal Opera House orchestra to unprecedented heights, but this time my knocked-out feeling was caused by the unusually exciting direction and the phenomenal lead performers.

Francesca Zambello does not shy away from a lot of sentiment and provides a blatantly realistic spectacle, without updates and concepts. The action actually takes place in Seville and the eye is treated to a beautiful choreography and stunning costumes.

Anna Caterina Antonacci is a very spunky and sexy Carmen, very defiant but also confident and proud. Her gorgeous black eyes spit fire, and her beautiful appearance and great acting talent do not hide the fact that she can also sing: her powerful voice has a range of emotions. All in all: a real tragédienne. A real Carmen.

Ildebrando D’Arcangelo is a fantastic, virile Escamillo. His entrance on the big black horse is truly spectacular.

Jonas Kaufmann is easily the best José I have ever experienced in my life. His spinto tenor sounds phenomenal in all registers, nowhere exaggerated and lyrical and whispery where necessary. He cannot be outdone as an actor either, and his more-than-attractive looks we’ll take as a bonus. You surely know by now: you must have this Carmen! (Decca 0743312)




AND WITH RICHARDS AND GARDINER



Carmen by Bizet, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner Gardiner… who would have thought it possible? And yet it makes more sense than you think. Because with the 2009 performance, Gardiner brought the opera back to the site of its world premiere and the orchestra played the work with the instruments of that time.

Adrian Noble’s (brilliant!) direction is mainly focused on the characters, the staging is highly illustrative and the libretto is closely followed. It is realistic, beautiful and exciting. The unified décor is adapted to each scene, making you feel like you are actually present in all these different locations.

The voices are on the small side, but I don’t think that was a problem at the time at the Opéra Comique in Paris, let alone on DVD.

Andrew Richards is not the best José ever, but his interpretation of the role is phenomenal. He begins as a nice and very cuddly stranger and ends up as a kind of Jesus, with delusion in his eyes.

Unfortunately, Nicolas Cavallier (Escamillo) does not have enough sex appeal for a macho toreador, but he compensates a lot with his beautiful singing.

Anna Caterina Antonacci is one of the best Carmens these days. Beautiful, sexy, challenging and nowhere vulgar. Her deep, warm voice has all the colours of the rainbow.Gardiner clearly feels inspired. His tempi are dizzying at times.


ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER



The 2003 production in Glyndebourne, directed by David McVickar, also looks superb. The stage- set in the first two acts is very industrious. The third act begins foggy, with sparse lighting (the lighting is very ingenious), very cinematic, and very moving. In act IV, you have everything needed to populate Seville: the toreros, the matadors, the beautifully dressed Spanish Doñas and Dons. Breathtaking.

Carmen’s death (her throat is cut in a very bloody way) is thriller-like exciting. Unfortunately, the lead role is played by Anne Sofie von Otter. Because, let’s face it: Carmen is not her thing. In her valiant attempts to still convey something of the Spanish temperament, she degenerates into a vulgar slut. Sin. (OPUS ARTE OA 0867)

GERALDINE FARRAR IN BLACK AND WHITE



Just like today’s movies, opera used to be public entertainment number one. And that for a long time. No wonder, then, that from the very beginning of cinema, much attention was paid to this already well known art form. Carmen, one of the most popular

operas of the time, appealed particularly to the imagination and was filmed as early as 1912 with the prima ballerina of the Opéra Comique, Régina Badet, in the leading role.

In 1915, Cecil B. DeMille filmed the opera again, this time with Geraldine Farrar as the man-eating gypsy. Now, Farrar was not only one of the greatest sopranos and MET legends of the early 20th century, her beautiful appearance and excessive acting talent also enabled her to build a career as a Hollywood actress.

The story was  substantially amended, making Carmen a thoroughly bad woman, possessing hardly any subtleties. Everything is black and white, just like the (silent) film itself, but that should not spoil the fun, because there is a lot to enjoy.

The film has been fully restored from DeMille’s personal copy, and the original score by Hugo Riesenfeld has been recreated by Gilian B. Anderson, who also conducts the London Symphonic Orchestra in the recorded soundtrack. As a bonus a few arias, sung by Farrar, have been edited in between scenes. For film and opera lovers alike, this is a veritable monument and not to be missed (VAI 4362).

CD’S

The most beautiful CD recording, at least to me, is the one with Teresa Berganza under Claudio Abbado (DG 4196362). It was recorded in the studio in 1978, but only after a series of live performances, and it is all the better for that! Ileana Cotrubas (Micaela) and Sherrill Milnes (Escamillo) complete the excellent cast.

Two years earlier, Domingo also recorded the opera in the studio (Decca 4144892), but I am less enthusiastic about it.

Solti conducts superbly and Tatiana Troyanos as Carmen is one in a thousand, perhaps she is even better than Berganza, but José van Dam is no Escamillo and the whole lacks the atmosphere of the theater.



Without a doubt interesting are the performances of the lead role by Victoria de los Angeles and, of course, Maria Callas. And for lovers (and collectors) of historical recordings: Urania (URN 22.378) not long ago released the 1959 performance recorded live in Paris, featuring a seductive Carmen by Consuelo Rubio and an elegant Don José by Leopold Simoneau.




Another one you cannot ignore is the legendary Conchita Supervia’s rendition of the role (various labels).


In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein II adapted the opera into a Broadway musical, Carmen Jones. He moved the action to the present (we are talking about the early years of World War II) in Southern America. The premiere, on 2 December 1943 was a great success, and to think that the entire (black!) cast was making its debut on stage!



A few years ago, Naxos (81208750) released the highlights (recorded in 1944) of the musical, with the bonus of four songs from Otto Preminger’s 1954 film of the same name. The role of Carmen there was played by Dorothy Daindridge, but sung by the very young (20!) Marilyn Horne, then a soprano. Breathtaking




By the way: did you know that the opera’s most famous hit, the Habanera, was not by Bizet at all? It was called El Arreglito and was composed by Sebastián Yradier). Bizet was convinced that it was a folk song and when he found out that it had been written by a composer who had died only ten years earlier, he added a footnote to the score, citing the source.



Twenty years after his death: Rolf Liebermann In Memoriam

Liebermann

Rolf Liebermann © Claude Truong-Ngoc (1980

The Swiss composer Rolf Liebermann (14 September 1910 – 2 January 1999) is nowadays seen as the father of Regietheater, although he meant something different from the current conceptualism in which the boundary between the permissible and the ridiculous is explored and often crossed.

Under his leadership, the Hamburg State Opera, where he ruled for fourteen years between 1959 and 1973, grew into one of the best and most talked-about opera houses in the world. Liebermann created a good, solid and varied repertoire with special attention to contemporary works, built a fantastic artists’ ensemble and attracted foreign stars and would-be stars (Plácido Domingo’s world career began in Hamburg). Arlene Saunders, William Workman, Raymond Wolansky, Franz Grundhebber, Tom Krause, Hans Sotin, Toni Blankenheim – they all formed a solid and close-knit ensemble, with the occasional addition of a bigger (read: more familiar to the general public) name: Lucia Popp in Fidelio and Zar und Zimmerman, Cristina Deutekom, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Nicolai Gedda in Die Zauberflöte, Sena Jurinac in Wozzeck.

Liebermann boek

Liebermann also regularly commissioned compositions. In the years of his management no less than 28 operas and ballets had their world premiere, a number many an opera house should be jealous of. Later, in his autobiographical book ‘Opernjahre’, Liebermann described his time at the Hamburg State Opera as the happiest time of his life. I can imagine that. If you were able to realise so much beauty at such a high level, you can only be intensely happy.

Luckily for us, who have not (consciously) experienced those years, Liebermann was also thinking about the future and had director Joachim Hess record thirteen productions for television. Most of the recordings took place in a studio. With the means available at the time, it was impossible to record sound and images at the same time. This meant that first a musical soundtrack had to be pre- recorded, after which the singers could mime to it in the studio very precisely, so everything was in sync.

Liebermann box

About ten years ago, Arthaus Musik released these operas on DVD. Of course, by today’s technical standards, it’s all far from perfect. The sound is mono and the camera is rather static, but for the enthusiast there is a lot to enjoy, not in the least because of the repertoire.

PENDERECKI: DIE TEUFEL VON LOUDUN

Liebermann Penderski

In 1967 Liebermann approached Krzysztof Penderecki with the request to compose an opera for Hamburg. The result was Die Teufel von Loudun, for which the composer himself had written the libretto. The story is based on a true event: in Loudun (France) in 1634, a Prioress of the Ursuline Order accused a priest of diabolical practices for which he was sentenced to be burned at the stake.

The opera had its world premiere on 20 June 1969 and shortly afterwards it was filmed. The leading role of mother Jeanne was performed in a very impressive way by Tatiana Troyanos, another great star whose career began in Hamburg (after she had received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to further her education in Europe, she auditioned in Hamburg where Liebermann immediately offered her a contract). Her portrait of the hunchbacked demonically possessed nun with sexual visions is breathtaking. Everything about her, from head to toe, acts. Her facial expression changes with every phrase she sings and her voice chills you to the bone.

The horror-like music with its many glissandi and octave leaps evokes a feeling of unease and makes the opera, despite the immense tension, rather uncomfortable to watch. The staging, with a lot of nudity and explicit sex scenes, is very progressive for that time and I can imagine it was experienced as shocking!

First act of DIE TEUFEL VON LOUDUN:

Speaking of music: did you know that William Friedkin used music by Penderecki for his film The Exorcist?

GIAN CARLO MENOTTI: HILFE, HILFE DIE GLOBOLINKS!

Liebramann Globolinks

Especially for Hamburg, the Italian-American composer and director Gian Carlo Menotti composed Hilfe, Hilfe Die Globolinks!, an opera ‘for children and for those who love children’. The premiere took place in 1968 and a year later it was filmed in the studio.

I must confess that I’m not a big fan of children’s operas, but I’ve been shamelessly enjoying this one. It is an irresistible fairy tale about aliens (Globolinks) who are allergic to music and can only be defeated by means of music.

The images are very sensational for that period, full of colour and movement and the forest little Emily (the irresistible Edith Mathis) has to go through with her violet to get help is really frightening. The aliens are a bit of a let-down according to modern standards, but that doesn’t matter, it gives the whole a cuddly shine. The work is bursting with humour and irony; musical barbarians are lashed out at: the school principal who doesn’t like music turns into an alien himself.

There are also a lot of one-liners (“music leads you to the right path” or “when music dies, the end of the world is near”). It is incomprehensible a work like this is not performed all the time in every school (and I don’t mean just for the children), the subject is (and remains) very topical.

None of the roles, including the children, could be better cast, and this once again proves the high standard of the Hamburg ensemble. In which other city would you find so many great singers/actors who can perform so many different roles on such a high level?

 

Translated with the http://www.DeepL.com/Translator

In Dutch: Rolf Liebermann In Memoriam