Bizet: Carmen.(Sound Recording Review)

Uria-Monzon, Vaduva; Papi]s, le Texier; Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Choeur de Grand-Theatre de Bordeaux, Lombard. Naive V4964 (Naxos, dist.)

The authentic Gallic favor of this Carmen distinguishes it from most of the recent competition. Its lack of big-name singers or a superstar conductor turns out to be an asset, helping it escape the elephantiasis that afflicts some Carmen recordings. This isn't the Myth of Carmen but an intimate drama with human-scaled characters. When Jose sings "Parle-moi de ma mere," he isn't making a grand statement about filial devotion--he's actually asking about his mother. Based on a 1994 Grand-Theatre de Bordeaux production, the recording has a refreshing smell of greasepaint about it. It's a theatrically engaged performance, scaled to a 1,300-seat house whose dimensions Bizet might have imagined for his work.

Alain Lombard admirably uses the Choudens edition of the opera, with the opera-comique spoken dialogue, rather than Ernest Guiraud's leaden recitatives, but avoiding the spurious accretions, drawn from Fritz Oeser's 1964 critical edition, that have crept into many modern recordings. The cast of (mostly) native French speakers brings a true conversational quality to the dialogue, far preferable to the awkward efforts of international opera stars on rival sets, or worse, the use of a separate group of speaking actors.

Lombard's quick tempos feel vivacious rather than driven, accentuating the light and color that abound in this opera. There are some eccentric exceptions. The opening chorus is poky, as if in illustration of the ordinariness of the Seville afternoon, necessitating a gear-shift at Micaela's entrance. And the last-act duettino "Si tu ...