This is a brilliant reading, full of sunlight and very strong rhythms, with quick tempos, no sentimentality, and a string section that slashes away maniacally during the Gypsy Song and third-act knife fight, but caresses Carmen’s Habanera and José’s Flower Song. Not that it matters.Īs suggested, the true value of this set is the elusive Kleiber’s leadership. From then on, she’s the fatalist we know, and a pretty nasty one at that. Zeffirelli sees Carmen as a lusty, sort-of dopey, not-very-wicked, skirt-twirling wench who believes what she feels when she feels it (she really does seem to want to go away into the mountains with Don José in Act 2), but who somehow turns serious when the cards tell her she’s going to die in Act 3. It doesn’t hurt that his cast looks good and is comfortable on stage. Zeffirelli also directed for TV and his choices are wise and dramatically apt. In fact, aside from the unstoppable busy-ness, the opulence is just fine, with the first act properly languid and sensual, Lillas Pastia’s Tavern quite a fun-filled, expensive dive, the Smuggler’s Hideout (with very well-dressed smugglers) as mountainous as it should be, and a final act that catches the noon-day sun, the mania of the bullfight, and somehow, time for a brief flamenco-like ballet interlude. And indeed, it’s quite an event, a Franco Zeffirelli production to end them all, with so many people on stage milling about, dancing, interacting, and running that even Carmen herself occasionally gets lost in Act 2, with an additional cast of horses showing up at strategic, opulent moments. Here it is, the opening night of Carmen, from December 9, 1978, which was telecast in Austria two days later. Yes, it’s been in their “vaults”, waiting for who-knows-what, and just last year they asked Carlos Kleiber–a “great but difficult man”–if they might release this video, and he agreed. Q: Who knew this existed? A: Austrian Broadcasting.
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