Bizet Carmen opera to libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Directed 2009 by Adrian Noble at the Opéra Comique. Stars Anna Caterina Antonacci (Carmen), Andrew Richards (Don José), Anne-Catherine Gillet (Micaëla), Nicolas Cavallier (Escamillo), Virginie Pochon (Frasquita), Annie Gill (Merédès), Matthew Brook (Zuniga), Riccardo Novaro (Moralès), Françis Dudziak (Le Dancaïre); Vincent Ordonneau (Le Remendado), and Simon Davies (Lillas Pastia). Sir John Eliot Gardner conducts the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, the Monteverdi Choir, and the Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine (Chorus Master Gaël Darchen). Set and costume design by Mark Thompson; lighting design by Jean Kalman; movement collaborator was Sue Lefton. Directed for TV by François Roussillon. Sung in French. Released 2021, disc has 5.0 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: D
This video harks back to 2009, and it was published in 2010 by FRAmusica (with the eye-catching cut-through keepcase cover), but in DVD only. Critics reviewing the disc were favorable even while they ranked it as runner-up to the famous Covent Garden Blu-ray of Carmen that had come out in 2008 with Antonacci and Kaufman. Using a then new critical edition, the Noble/Gardiner version is scaled down, intimate, and has original spoken dialog that has been abandoned in most other productions. Gardiner’s orchestra produces, per critic Tim Ashley, a raw period sound that supports Antonacci (Carmen) and Richards (José) in creating an “erotic charge that helps you understand why its first audiences found Carmen obscene.”
So why did we have to wait so long to get this in Blu-ray? This may be explained by Steven Jude Tietjen in the October 2021 Opera News at pages 62-63 stating that “. . . the filming and sound mixing leave much to be desired. There are often sudden and brief unexplained close-ups that quickly transition to a full-screen view, making it difficult to keep focus or even understand what or whom you should focus on.” He goes on to say that it’s hard “to hear singers or dialogue without cranking up the volume.” Mark Pullinger takes a different view of this Blu-ray saying that the performance is excellent and the recorded sound is “superb.” See the August 2021 Gramophone at pages 76-77.
So who do we believe? Well, even Tietjen says that Antonacci’s Carmen in this production is “legendary." So if you have a special reason to want to have this for Antonacci, this will probably be substantially better than the DVD was. Under our grading system, this gets the D. We are going to make that our provisional grade. If we get to review this and like it, or if someone else will go to bat for this DVD raised from the dead, we would cheerfully raise the grade.
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