Carmen

Carmen is among the small handful of the most popular operas in the canon. In this posting on Carmen, I am attempting not so much a review of the 4 famed recordings of the opera but rather an assessment of how the title role has been conceived and performed by the 4 divas concerned. It is rare to encounter an operatic role that is able to call up such diametrically-opposed conceptions as those of Maria Callas and Victoria de los Angeles, for instance. It is more usual to encounter differences in terms of shades of grey rather than in black and white.

1. Victoria de los Angeles (EMI, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, 1956)

It is astonishing that I only heard Victoria de los Angeles’ recording of Carmen a few weeks ago. By common assent, this is the classic recording of the opera. I heard de los Angeles’ singing of the Habanera (which everyone knows even if they don’t know a thing about opera) only a few weeks ago on a CD and I didn’t recognize the voice but I immediately sat up. I’d always felt the Habanera was a boring piece of music, but here was a most bewitching rendition of it, and for the first time I heard and saw in my mind a beautiful and warm woman teasingly singing her credo of love. It was as far removed as it could possibly be from the usual versions that suggest carnality and cynicism.

When I reached out to read the singer’s name on that track, I then remembered all that I’d read about this recording. By assent, the view was that Victoria de los Angeles’ Carmen was indeed beautifully sung, but ‘twas a pity that she could never persuade anyone that Carmen could do anything so vulgar as stab a fellow worker at her cigarette factory with a dagger. This view, of course, presupposes what kind of a woman could be a Carmen – a free spirit who opts for the immediacy and transience of love and passion over the safety and commitment of any conventional relationship. And the conventional view is that such a woman could only be the carnal and cynical sort.

De los Angeles certainly puts paid to that notion. She at once persuades you that here is a woman of a human scale, in whom free-spiritedness and responsiveness to the immediacy of passion cause no conflict or any sense of disjunction. And neither should warmth and sweetness of personality be counted a surprise. Everything is credible about this Carmen, right up to her willingness to face death at the opera’s end rather than submit to a lover whom she no longer loves. I had ignored this classic recording for a long time, mainly because I was swayed by the common opinion of it, but it offers a truly a unique portrait of Carmen, and one that is attractive.

Carmen is, of course, a mezzo-soprano role, but vocally, there is probably no role more suitable for de los Angeles, a soprano with a very rich and warm middle voice but whose top was no longer easy or pleasant by about 1960. Her voice was most probably truly a mezzo-soprano in nature (and indeed, I thought I was hearing a mezzo-soprano when I heard that bewitching Habanera for the first time).

Nicolai Gedda in his first recording of the role of Don Jose (his second was with the redoubtable Maria Callas, see below) matches de los Angeles’ conception in making the namby-pamby Don Jose an almost genteel man rather than the near-psychotic that he actually is. And French baritone Ernest Blanc is successful as the matador Escamillo because he sings the famous Torreador Song with the style and glamour which I believe the role requires. Escamillo, after all, sweeps onto the stage, cape and all, offering an extraordinary antidote to the dull and deadly Don Jose. You would need to see this moment in the opera to understand Bizet’s intentions here.

2. Maria Callas (EMI, conducted by George Pretre, 1964)

No greater contrast could there be to Victoria de los Angeles’ Carmen than Callas’. Callas manages to make Carmen a very unattractive character – cold, dour, sour, a truly misguided interpretation. The great tragedian in Callas turns Carmen into a great tragic figure, but so turned off are you from the start that you don’t want to hear about it to the end. True, no one makes you sit up at the very first words of Carmen’s entry onto the stage the way Callas does, and no one sings the Card Song (in which Carmen realizes that her death has been foretold) with such a gripping sense of foreboding and brooding. But you just don’t buy her Habanera, about love being like a bird and so on. This Carmen has never experienced love, or passion, or even a moment’s joy anywhere in her life. This Carmen is not even interested in Don Jose, but eyes him distantly from a corner and swallows him in the course of the opera as a means to making her own pact with her destiny.

And yes, this was Callas’ second last recording made in the throes of her final vocal phase, but Carmen is a low-lying role intended for a mezzo-soprano, so Callas should have been able to negotiate her way around its vocal demands. But no, the register changes required in the low reaches of the voice pose difficulties, and I become more certain of this judgement when I hear other sopranos, Victoria de los Angeles and Leontyne Price, essay the role (with these two singers, you could be forgiven for asking: What register changes? Are there register changes for a soprano in this role?).

Nicolai Gedda, in his second outing on a recording as Don Jose, is now a different creature, singing with a fierceness to match Callas in the final moments, though it is not nearly enough to do justice to the role.

3. Teresa Berganza (Phillips, conducted by Claudio Abbado, 1973)

When the Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza embarked on her recording of Carmen, she released an accompanying letter printed in the record notes detailing her conception of her role. She made a great fuss, about how, as a Spanish woman, she found it offensive to have Carmen regarded as carnal woman of low repute when in fact she saw Carmen as a beacon of liberated Spanish womanhood. It was against this fanfare that she took on the role and the recording.

Berganza offered indeed an intriguing promise, and ultimately a foolish one. Berganza’s performance is disastrous. Carnal and sluttish this Carmen certainly isn’t, but I was at a loss as to what it actually was. I heard nothing. This Carmen was no low-life, was not mean and tragic (like Callas’), was not alluring and attractive (like de los Angeles’), was neither sensual, free-spirited, warm, liberated, nor anything else. The Habanera was well sung (as you would expect from Berganza) but had no charm, and it was not the credo that Bizet had intended (indeed, it was not a statement of anything in particular). Similarly, her Card Song foretold no tragedy, and you expect this Carmen not only to stay alive at the end of the opera but indeed to live to a ripe old age as a benign Spanish grandmother in a quiet Spanish village. No, Berganza’s conception of Carmen has already been well served, and well served by her compatriot, Victoria de los Angeles.

Vocally too, Berganza’s sweet voice is too small for the role, and the recording had to be twiddled to favour Berganza's voice in volume, with the unfortunate effect that Domingo sounds always as if he is singing in the background, serenading her from afar.

Sherill Milnes, despite his basically glamorous baritone voice, is unable (like most singers singing Escamillo) to deal successfully with the bottom notes of the Toreador’s Song. And it is absolutely crucial that the singer here be able to reach both ends of his range comfortably to give the proper heft and swirl to this famous number in the opera.

4. Leontyne Price (RCA, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, 1964)

This was another recording I avoided based on the prejudice that the soprano Leontyne Price, renowned for her fabulous top notes but with a very hoarse bottom voice, would not be able to cope with the low-lying reaches of the role. And what a surprise it turned out to be. Price’s performance is one of the most successful on record. The voice is amazingly at ease at the bottom, quite able to fool those unfamiliar into believing that this was, indeed, a mezzo-soprano they were hearing.

And what a performance. Unlike with de los Angeles, you have no doubt that although alluring and sensual, this is also a woman fully capable of violence.

As Don Jose, Franco Corelli gives a convincing portrait of a little boy inside a big man. The sheer machismo in his tone married to a volatile and whining manner rightly hints at a dangerous man who could easily topple over the verge. Vocally, Corelli is not always attractive, the handsome and hefty tone often sounding unfocused at mid-volume but hitting with his customary impact when he has to sing out. Despite this, of the Don Joses discussed here, Corelli’s is the only one who draws you into the drama.

Robert Merrill, with one of the most impressive baritone voices ever heard, unfortunately manages only to exude aggressiveness in his Toreador Song, spitting and snarling away as if in the midst of a bullfight rather than allowing the song to be his credo in manner and attitude. Escamilla’s breath-catching entrance launches the song and it is a moment of suave glamour, not aggression.

Mirella Freni is among the best of the recorded Micaelas, a thankless role which nevertheless welcomes a soprano who can sing Micaela’s aria with a fullness of tone which is often not found in the various recorded Micaelas around.

All in all, of the four recordings discussed here, this is the one to get.