Description

Erato: Bizet — Carmen (Migenes, Domingo, Raimondi, Maazel) 2CD

Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!

Product Details:

Product Type: Audio CD (2-disc set)
Brand / Label: Erato / Warner Classics
Composer: Georges Bizet
Conductor: Lorin Maazel
Principal Cast: Julia Migenes (Carmen), Plácido Domingo (Don José), Ruggero Raimondi (Escamillo), Faith Esham (Micaëla)
Orchestra: Orchestre National de France
Chorus: Chœurs et Maîtrise de Radio France
Original Recording: 1984 (Erato Disques)
This Edition: 2016 (Parlophone Records Limited / Warner Music Group)
Genre: Classical, Opera
Style: French Opera, Grand Opera
Catalog Number: 0825646483242
UPC: 0825646483242
Condition: Factory Sealed

Product Features

Format: 2 × CD
Discs: 2
CD1 Runtime: 74:34
CD2 Runtime: 76:18
Total Runtime: approx. 150 minutes
Booklet: Synopsis and text in English, German, French, and Spanish
Packaging: Standard double jewel case, factory shrink-wrapped

Overview

This is the Carmen that came with a film attached — and the recording is better for it. Lorin Maazel conducted the Orchestre National de France for Francesco Rosi's celebrated 1984 film adaptation, and the result is one of the most viscerally alive accounts of this opera on disc. Julia Migenes brings something genuinely theatrical to the title role: unpredictable, sensual, and entirely committed. Plácido Domingo's Don José is warm-voiced and believably tormented. Ruggero Raimondi as Escamillo adds swagger and weight. It's a cast that earns its reputation.

Maazel's conducting is alert to every shift in Bizet's score — the wit in the lighter scenes, the building tension of the final act. The Orchestre National de France plays with idiomatic French character, and the 1984 recording has been cleanly reissued here by Erato/Warner Classics in 2016. At over 150 minutes across two discs, the complete opera is all here, with a multilingual booklet that includes the full synopsis and libretto text.

For collectors of opera on CD, this is one of the landmark Carmen recordings of the late 20th century — not as a historical curio, but as a performance that still holds up on its own terms.

Interesting Facts

Francesco Rosi's 1984 film of Carmen was shot on location in Spain and won the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film; this recording served as its soundtrack.
Julia Migenes (born Julia Migenes-Johnson in New York, 1945) was primarily known as a Broadway singer before this Carmen made her an international opera star virtually overnight.
Plácido Domingo has recorded the role of Don José multiple times, but this Maazel recording is consistently cited among the finest — praised for the lyrical warmth he brings to a role that can easily tip into melodrama.
Lorin Maazel (1930–2014) was one of the most recorded conductors in history, having led major orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic across a career spanning seven decades.
Bizet's Carmen premiered in Paris in March 1875 to a cool critical reception; Bizet died three months later, never knowing that the opera would become one of the most performed in the repertoire.
The opera is based on Prosper Mérimée's 1845 novella of the same name; the libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy made significant changes to the story's tone and ending.