Carmen Jones, Oscar Hammerstein’s 1943 musical theater adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, reset the opera in North Carolina and Chicago during World War II specifically for an all-African-American cast. In turn, Robert Russell Bennett adapted Bizet’s original scoring to the smaller dimensions of a Broadway pit orchestra. The results garnered excellent reviews and a long Broadway run. If you own the 1944 Broadway cast album in its LP or cassette reissue, or, heaven help us, the original 78rpm six-disc set, throw them away. Producer Brian Drutman and his team have gone back to the best possible sources and restored them with painstaking care to their most vibrant, dynamic, and listenable state.
Muriel Smith is marvelous in the title role, striking an ideal balance between her character’s skittish and defiant qualities. Luther Saxon’s Joe (Don Jose) and Carlotta Franzell’s Cindy Lou (Micaela) are no less memorable, although Glenn Bryant’s relatively colorless voice suggests little of the swagger and bravado you’d expect from prizefighter Husky Miller (Escamillo). June Hawkins manages to sneak in a few jazz phrasings within Beat Out Dat Rhythm On A Drum (the Gypsy Dance), and appropriately so. The latter selection also appears as a bonus track with Russ Morgan’s Orchestra–and Kitty Carlisle singing, if not exactly swinging. Decca’s superb annotations and archival photos add value to a reissue no Carmen Jones fan should miss.
