Search - Benvenuto Franci, Georges Bizet, Lorenzo Molajoli :: Aureliano Pertile Vol. 5: Bizet's Carmen

A very different Carmen

F. Behrens | Keene, NH USA | 11/16/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There is a "fun" album for those who love Bizet's "Carmen," already have a good recording of it (my favorite is the 1950 Opera Comique, now unavailable here in the US), and would be interested in hearing it sung completely in the wrong style! Having been brought up on RCA Victor's old guides to opera, I knew there had been once in history a recording of "Carmen" in Italian; but I did not know there were two of them. Vocal Archives has just issued the one about which I knew nothing as Vol. 5 in a series devoted to the Italian tenor with the wonderful name, Aureliano Pertile on 2 CDs (VA 1219-20). Using of course the Guiraud edition with the sung recitative, this version offers the La Scala forces conducted by Lorenzo Molajoli with Aurora Buades as Carmen and Benvenuto Franci as a light voiced Escamillo. Buades is pretty mono-chromatic (though not necessarily monotonous) in the title role ("steely" is the word one critic once used) and Pertile is your typical Italian tenor of the time, complete with sobs in their final encounter. I spotted two minor cuts that may have been necessitated by the CD limits or by the original 78 limits. But students of vocal history should gobble up this as an example of how--before the jet and greed created a neutral opera style for all nationalities--one tradition treated a masterwork written for quite another tradition. There is no libretto and I doubt if the translation used can be hunted up anywhere outside of the La Scala vaults. Good fun, but certainly never the "Carmen" of choice."