Search - Georges Bizet, Michael Schonwandt, Inva Mula :: Bizet: Ivan IV, Opera in 5 Acts and 6 Tableaux

More French grand-opéra

B. Cathey | 07/15/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you want to know what French gran-opéra is about perhaps you should begin with Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Meyerbeer's Les huguenots or Halévy's La Juive. But there is much more grand-opéra which is not so often recorded: Auber's La Muette de Portici, or Massenet's Le roi de Lahore and Esclarmonde. Even Verdi composed two grand-opéras, Don Carlos and Les vêpres sicilennes. Bizet in more known for his opéra-comiqués, mostly Carmen and Pearlfishers, but he did write this beautiful grand-opéra. Besides, the version recorded here is the new edition by Howard Williams, who seems to have been more respectful to Bizet's intentions than Henri Büsser, who prepared the edition partialy recorded by Emi, available with Pearlfishers altogether. The cast is better in this second version, most notably Inva Mula and Ludovic Tézier, except for Julian Gavin, the tenor, and I don't really like Henri Legay, who played Igor in the old Emi edition."

Quite a Find!

Howard M. Bushnell | NJ, USA | 10/22/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Thanks to the favorable reviews from Brett Farrell and B.Cathey, among others, I took a chance and ordered this. I am most grateful to these people for bringing it to my attention. It is wonderful! I received it today and have listened to it twice already. Gorgeous music, beautiful voices, superb sound. Much better than the old EMI excerpts, which seem now to be of an entirely different opera altogether. I thought I had everything, but...! I recommend it 100%."