Bizet: Carmen (Blu-Ray) – Plácido Domingo, Elena Obraztsova
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Item: 4058407094739
Description
Bizet: Carmen (Blu-Ray) – Plácido Domingo, Elena Obraztsova
Composer: Georges Bizet
Artists: Plácido Domingo, Elena Obraztsova, Yuri Mazurok, Isobel Buchanan, Cheryl Kanfoush, Axelle Gall, Kurt Rydl, Hans Helm, Heinz Zednik, Paul Wolfrum, Orchestra, Chorus & Ballet of the Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna Boys’ Choir
Conductor: Carlos Kleiber
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Video Format: 4:3
Sound Format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD MA 5.1
Region: All Regions
Language: French
Subtitles: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean
Number of Discs: 1
Studio: Monarda
Release Date: May 2, 2025
Run Time: 154 minutes
The wonderful staging of Carmen by director Franco Zeffirelli is captured here in a live recording from the Vienna State Opera in 1978. The meticulous Carlos Kleiber only ever conducted a highly selected repertoire, and among his very few audio and video recordings are only seven complete operas. The Zeffirelli staging is the only premiere that Kleiber ever conducted.
In December 1978, the masterly Franco Zeffirelli created a colorful and atmospheric imagery while the musical genius of Kleiber drew from the music a rhythmic vitality and subtle passion that has never lost its transparency and lightness.
Plácido Domingo, still the young lyrical tenor, starred as Don José, and Elena Obraztsova gave a wonderful natural Carmen, a far cry from the usual she-devil erotic cliché. The cast was completed by the young Isobel Buchanan who stood in at this production at short notice and included Yuri Mazurok who was later to become a high-ranking Verdi baritone.
The Viennese audience in the opera house hailed the performance as a triumph. “The applause,” according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, “threatened to last as long as a full-length opera.”
History
Carmen
World premiere: 1887.
Georges Bizet’s original Carmen, takes place in and around Seville, Spain and tells of the downfall of a soldier, Don José, seduced by the wiles of the fiery Carmen. José abandons his sweetheart and his military duties for Carmen, yet loses her love to the glamorous matador Escamillo, after which José kills her in a jealous rage.
On January 9, 1884, Carmen premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. Thereafter it was quickly incorporated into the Met's regular repertory staging Carmen well-over a thousand times. The Met Opera’s 2023-2024 Season debuts a vital new production of Carmen, reinvigorating the classic story with a staging that moves the action to the modern day and finds at the heart of the drama issues that could not be more relevant today: gendered violence, abusive labor structures, and the desire to break through societal boundaries.
Among the best-known of all operatic arias are Carmen’s “Habanera” from Act 1, sung by the title character and the toreador’s song, “Votre toast” in Act 2, performed by the matador Escamillo.
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