Bizet - Carmen / Maazel, Migenes, Domingo

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This is the most popular opera production so far on DVD, surpassing even Franco Zeffirelli's lavish, symbol-laden La Traviata. It is an exciting Carmen, with a young-looking Placido Domingo in top form for a role he has sung hundreds of times. For Julia Migenes, it was her first performance in a role she would have trouble performing in an opera house. Her voice does not fit easily into Carmen's range, and she spent months training it, very successfully, before singing the role in a recording studio where the soundtrack was taped before the film was shot. Casting her in the role was a gamble, but it worked; she is a convincing actress--even better than Maria Ewing in the competing DVD edition from Covent Garden, though Ewing acts very well and has a more appropriate voice.

This movie version was filmed on location, conveying a kind of atmosphere, a sense of space, movement, and presence hard to achieve in a staged performance shot for television. It takes the action out of doors for many scenes. The opening titles are superimposed on the bloody conclusion of a bullfight. The changing of the guard in the opening scene, with the boys' chorus playing soldier, the crowd scenes, the dance number that opens Act II, the panoramic scenery of the smugglers' mountain hideout, all benefit from the freedom granted by movie cameras. But the music is, on the whole, more effectively performed in the Covent Garden production, which also handles close-up shots better, perhaps because it was directed with a small screen in mind. The opera house atmosphere will make hard-core opera fans feel more at home. The movie version uses the opera's original opera comique form with some spoken dialogue rather than recitatives. --Joe McLellan

Description

All the passion and spectacle of Bizet's Carmen comes to life in this dazzling screen opera starring Placido Domingo and Julia Migenes-Johnson. In 19th century Seville, the lusty, tempestuous Carmen (Migenes-Johnson) seduces a naive Army corporal, Don Jose (Domingo), newly assigned to the village fortress. Jose abandons his career, his fiancée and even his dying mother for the love of this sultry gypsy. But soon she spurns him in favor of a toreador, Escamillo (Ruggero Raimondi). Crazed with jealousy, Jose begs Carmen to return to him, but her taunting declaration of independence results in tragedy. Shot entirely on location in Andalusian Spain, Bizet's Carmen has been hailed as the definitive version of this classic opera. 155 minutes.

Customer Reviews:

Gritty realism juxtaposed with the artifice of opera.......2007-06-15

This film version of the great Bizet opera aims for gritty realism right from the start - during the opening credits a bull is impaled and killed during a bull-fight - of course this realism goes out the window as soon as the characters open their mouths and begin to sing!

This is a well-mounted and well-sung production but the juxtaposition of a realistic setting with the artifice that is opera just doesn't work. The cast are not helped by the obvious lip-synching especially noticable during close-ups. The limitations of the singers as actors are also ruthlessly exposed.

Lovers of the vibrancy and passion of Bizet's great opera are best advised to look elsewhere.

one of the most beautiful versions of Carmen I have seen.............2007-03-22

This 1983 version of Bizet's Carmen, directed by the great Italian filmmaker, Franco Zeferelli, is wonderfully done. We really don't see enough of the great soprano, Julia Migenes, who is seen here as the title character, opposite the marvelous Placido Domingo, as Don Jose, her jealous lover. This film glows with exhuberance and fire and the cast does a fantastic job. I definitely reccomend this film to those who consider themselves opera fans, as well as those who have never seen an opera before. For starters, the cinematography is so earthy and beautiful to look at. Secondly, the acting is best-described as smouldering. Julia Migenes and Placido Domingo have great on-screen chemistry. Finally, this opera has some of the most well-loved and recognized operatic songs ever heard. Not to be missed.....

Amazing, not to be missed.......2006-10-22

An amazing visual feast - a palette of tawny burnt golds and sunsplashed white, relieved by the earth tones of the villagers' dresses and the grey-green of the uniforms...no pinks or purples here! Just a dash of red in the blooded bulls...and the only blue is the muted blue of Michaela's dress (the virginal one?) And those incredible towns and villages, and the vast striated rockfaces in the countryside. This is the land where the relentess sun beats into brains and perhaps turns everyone a little mad.

Wonderful little touches: dramatic duets sometimes sung by the couple in the distance while in the foreground the villagers work quietly at their tasks and the dogs wander about: the infants brought to the tobacco factory by their mothers, kept safe in cane walking frames or lying in cots...

But how can I write two paragraphs and not mention MUSIC??? Because I believe that this filmic rendering is actually truer to the heart of opera than many a stage production. Nowadays with our full-realism movie experiences we enjoy opera mainly for the music and silently forgive the limitations of stage sets and scenery. But opera is not only a series of arias. The wrenching emotional dramas were as important to those audiences as the musical medium. Surely if Bizet could have used movie cameras, he would have created something like this experience.

Anyway, musically, Domingo is splendid: Raimondi is excellent as Escamillo: on his first appearance you sense true musical authority. Carmen...she gives great hipswings, but the voice doesn't quite have the power this gypsy wildcat needs. Lorin Maazel's interpretation I like except for his too-fast tempo in the entrance of the toreadors: a scramble instead of a pageant.

Overall, not a Carmen to miss! I had no idea what to expect and was riveted from the introductory bullfight.

Simply the best representation of Bizet's.......2005-12-22

opera ever! It's very raw and authenic interpretation of both Merimee's and Bizet's story. Filmed in Spain back in 1984, the movie holds a special place in my imagination. Real places such as the cigarette factory, the bullring in Ronda where Escamillo received accolades for his bullfighting prowess. What I really liked about the movie are the performances by Placido Domingo and Julia Migenes. They brought Jose and Carmen to life with their dialogue and acting.

Please buy this movie. You're in for a real treat!

A moving Carmen - the movie of the opera.......2005-10-18

You cannot close your eyes, the film adds something so special to the music even if Migenes is not the best voice Carmen ever had ... More beautiful than any other Carmen movie (let alone the opera on stage) because it was shot in Spain.

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