This is Roberto Alagna’s finest recording to date. He’s well-known for attempting to delineate characters–unlike most tenors–and he often succeeds. Here, in his impeccable French, we watch Don José change: He’s boyish and eager in the first-act duet with Micaela, properly soldier-like with Carmen at first, and clearly taken with her–but not unhinged by the Seguidille. He enters Lillas Pastia’s with the swagger of a young man who has begun to live. He’s hurt by Carmen’s mocking, and his “Flower Song” is sung as a plea, quite gloriously, with a gentleness in its closing moments that’s achieved without crooning. By the time “La bas, la bas…” starts, the heat has been turned up for him and we see him getting into trouble. In Act 3 desperation sets in, and he’s superbly deranged in the final duet. His is a gradual unraveling, beautifully conceived and handled. And vocally he’s in peak form, with no strain, no spreading of the tone at any level. Indeed, he’s the best Don José on discs.
Thomas Hampson’s Escamillo is far more upper-crust than most. He’s so sure of himself that he understates and never resorts to barking–an odd, but believable and valid portrayal. Inva Mula’s Micaela is amazingly un-saccharine; she’s particularly good in Act 1, and the third act is fine, although the aria itself is oddly ineffective.
Oh, dear–that’s right, Carmen. Well, Angela Gheorghiu’s gifts are well known. The voice, with a fine, unique grain to it, is wonderfully expressive, her painting of the text is intelligent and pointed, and her singing, just as singing, can’t be faulted. But she’s not Carmen. Absolutely not. Her voice is too light, the plunges into chest voice in Act 3 are obvious plunges, meant to affect, and they’re un-natural. She entirely lacks the understated sensuality Berganza and Troyanos (or not-so-understated Verrett) bring to the role, and she can’t hold a candle to Callas when it comes to sarcasm, intensity, and “free-spiritedness”. And compared with her fellow soprano, Leontyne Price, Gheorghiu doesn’t have the heft.
Yes, Victoria de los Angeles is a soprano who lacks weight too, but her Carmen is strangely perverse in that way, sort of as if our Gypsy girl had just escaped from a convent and is ready to rumble. Gheorghiu is never bad; she’s just singing the wrong role. I wouldn’t want to hear Beverly Sills sing Butterfly or Mirella Freni sing Isolde either. Miscast is miscast, even if you’re a really big star, and besides that, she doesn’t have an individual point-of-view about Carmen. Enough.
With only one exception (the wonderful Elizabeth Vidal as Frasquita), the supporting cast (and chorus) is French, and it makes a tremendous impact. Michel Plasson brings out the languidness of the Sevillian heat in the first act, and while the Gypsy Song is quintessentially Spanish, Plasson feels and respects Bizet’s gift for nuance: it’s never in danger of turning into a free-for-all. The quintet is exquisitely delineated, with smooth French elisions and elegant phrasing and articulation, and the third-act prelude, with its flute and harp, is positively Berliozian. Included, incidentally, is a recently discovered version of the “Habanera”, sung here right after the usual one, and it’s quite interesting. What to do? For me this production is unmanageable despite the sensational Alagna and all its other attributes.
