Most helpful customer reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
OK sound quality; great performances and film, Nov 7 2003
It's strange that reviews on Amazon written so far on this recording seem to have focused on the film production rather than the CD set. Although this is a sound track of the Francesco Rossi film adaptation of Carmen, it is marketed(and rightly so) as an opera recording. First on the individual singer: they are all good, but I think Raimondi {Escamillo} and Domingo {Don Jose} stand out. Both perform superbly (and this is assuming you're just listening without seeing the movie). Faith Esham's Michaela is great. Her voice is full and smooth and fits Bizet's lyrical style very well. I like Migenes-Johnson's Carmen. She sings well, with a good amount of sultry, capricious aura. If you just listen to the CD's without having watched the film, you might have gotten a different feeling about Don Jose. Domingo's portrayal of Don Jose (perhaps partly due to his imposing physical presence) in the film is more confident than what his singing may suggest. Don Jose should be a more tentative character. {OK that's all I'll say about the film.) Now about the sound quality. There is more background noise than other recordings. I guess this is becasue it is a sound track after all, so a lot of stage sound is not filtered out. The sound is also not too "loud," so I typically have to turn up the volumn, and end up hearing quite a bit of noise. Recommended even just for the performances alone.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect! Glorious!!!!!, Mar 16 2002
This recording&the video turned me into an operanut.... I LOVE it and cannot stop to listen to it as often as possible. By now I own 35 recordings of Carmen with the likes of Ponselle, Simionato, Callas, Cossotto, de los Angeles, Callas, Crespin, Resnik, Moffo, Bumbry, Baltsa, Troyanos, Larmore, Verrett, Fassbänder.... Only Baltsa (whom I heard live as Carmen) came close to Migenes. I prefer Carreras' Don José because he is more passionate, more fatal, more self-destructive.....but Placido is amazing too. Raimondi is the ONLY Escamillo whom I really like in the role... All the others merely "act" Escamillo but he IS Escamillo. Esham is a pretty, fragile Micaela, very lovely.I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT, I LOVE IT!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb recording of the world's most popular opera, Oct 27 2001
By A Customer
Rosi's film (for which this is the soundtrack) is visually so powerful that the music could have been sacrificed. But it certainly wasn't! This performance is so perfect that, having now got to know it, I find it almost impossible to listen to any other.As for Julia Migenes (Migenes-Johnson when this recording was made), what words could be sufficiently superlative? Even her acting in the film does not match her exquisite singing in this recording, upstaging even Domingo. The dramatic impact of the final scene is simply overwhelming.
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