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Article: Bizet: Carmen (complete).(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Sensible Sound
- Article date:
- February 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Sensible Sound. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Marilyn Horne, James McCracken, Tom Krause, Adriana Maliponte; Leonard Bernstein, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. DG 289 471 750-2 (3-disc set).
There was a time when Bernstein's 1973 rendering of Bizet's Carmen with the Metropolitan Opera was a cornerstone of recorded opera performances. I had almost forgotten how very good this recording was until now. DG have reissued it on a three-disc, mid-price set that's hard to resist.
The first thing one notices, of course, is the slow tempos Bernstein adopts. He makes some conductors, say Solti, seem positively frenetic by comparison. Yet Bernstein makes everything appear perfectly natural, and the story unfolds ...