Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Carmen (1875)
Carmen – Consuelo Rubio (soprano)
Don José – Léopold Simoneau (tenor)
Micaëla – Pierrette Alarie (soprano)
Escamillo – Heinz Rehfuss (baritone)
Choeurs des Concerts de Paris, Les petits Chanteurs de Saint Nicolas
Orchestre des Concerts de Paris/Pierre-Michel Le Conte
rec. 1959, Paris
Ambient Stereo XR remastering by Andrew Rose
Libretto with English translation available, as well as full score and vocal score
Reviewed as MP3 download
Pristine Audio PACO217 [141]

Returning to this issue is for me a true trip of nostalgia, since this was my second complete opera recording, bought in October 1964 through the Concert Hall record club. I continued to buy their records well into the early 1970s, but then it seems to have ceased here in Sweden, though used copies have popped up from time to time in second-hand shops. In 2009 this Carmen  was transferred to CD by Urania. I got to know about that issue through a Monsieur Alarie from Canada, with whom I had some contacts at the time. His aunt was Pierrette Alarie, the Micaëla in this recording, and he was very surprised to learn that my old LP-set was in stereo. “Not even Pierrette has it in stereo!” he wrote. The Urania was a plain copy of the LPs, but it functioned as a substitute for the terribly worn LPs, and I had no hope for anything better – until this XR remastering arrived, and I have to say that it was a revelation, to use a hackneyed expression. There is another depth in the sound picture, more aura around the voices, and one feels transported from the clear but rather dry acoustics of the Paris studio to the warmth of the imaginary opera house that Andrew Rose has created. 

As for the performance, I’m not a reliable and objective judge. One’s first loves are always firmly etched into one’s musical memory, and that is particularly true in this case. James A. Altena in his well-researched and valuable liner notes, also gives some general comments on the quality of the performance, and they are mostly positive but with some reservations, which presumably are more in accordance with the truth than mine. Anyway we are in full agreement that Pierre-Michel Le Conte’s reading of the score is very French and in the opéra comique style with a light touch, brisk tempos and not an ounce of the ponderous heaviness that some world famous conductors apply – Leonard Bernstein, for instance, in his notorious MET recording on Deutsche Gramophone from the early 1970s. Le Conte is rhythmically alert and the music floats an inch above the floor. In tune with this, the soloists are uncommonly light voiced. The Spanish mezzo-soprano Consuelo Rubio in the title role is the weightiest of the four main soloists, and there is an air of authentic Spanish soil about her. Her great set-pieces in the first act, the Habanera and the Seguidilla, have the right amount of seductiveness and the fateful card scene in the third act presages Carmen’s imminent violent demise with ghastly realism. In the concluding duet she is a wild and defiant animal. She is in fact a more dynamic Carmen than her more lyrical compatriots in competing recordings, Victoria de los Ángeles with Beecham and Teresa Berganza with Abbado. Her Don José is sung by French-Canadian Léopold Simoneau, a very lyrical singer who was the foremost Mozart tenor of the 1950s and also a brilliant interpreter of the lyrical French repertoire. Logically, his voice was a size too small for Don José but he compensated for that with his expressivity, intelligent phrasing and intensity and he beat his beefier competitors by a horse length in the lyrical scenes. The flower song  has rarely been sung with such warmth and beauty of tone – not even by Nicolai Gedda for the almost contemporary Beecham recording, and the long first act duet with Micaëla, sung by his real-life wife Pierrette Alarie, is heavenly in its lyrical beauty. In the third act Alarie is back with Micaëla’s aria up in the mountains. To return to Simoneau for a moment I have to admit that his character is very far from the Don José of Prosper Mérimée’s novel, who was a crude and brutal individual. Simoneau’s Don José is a human and noble person. The forth central character is the bull-fighter Escamillo, and with that occupation he naturally has to be a fighter. Heinz Rehfuss was the possessor of one of the most beautiful bass-baritone voices of his time, and he sang everything from baroque to contemporary music. He had few equals as Bach interpreter, his recording of Mahler’s Wunderhorn-Lieder from 1963 also masterly, and in my opinion no one has sung the toreador song so beautifully as he does on this recording – but of course, his is primarily a lyrical voice, and he hasn’t got the bite and heft of a true bull-fighter. However, listen to the short scene at the beginning of Act IV, when Escamillo enters on his way to the bullfight arena, turns to Carmen and sings Si tu m’aimes, Carmen, tu pourras tout à l’heure etre fière de moi; what woman could resist that declaration of love, when sung so seductively? Not Carmen, anyway.

The rest of the cast is wholly idiomatic  and sings well, which further contributes to the sense of a real ensemble performance. This may not be a first choice for anyone, and some listeners may regret the lack of the spoken dialogue, but for me this is the real thing – from which I learnt the opera sixty years ago, and I am deeply grateful to Pristine Audio who have rescued it from oblivion in such wonderful new costume. I also believe that survivors other than I are still around with fond memories of this recording who will jump at the opportunity to return to it in the freshest possible sound. 

Göran Forsling

Previous review: Ralph Moore (September 2024)

Other cast
Frasquita – Maria Lopez (soprano)
Mercédès – Francine Arrauzau (mezzo-soprano)
Le Dancaïre – José Serrano (baritone)
Le Remendado – Pierre Louvier (tenor)
Moralès – Bernard Delacroix (baritone)
Zuninga – Pablo Ferme (bass)