Two Vintage Carmen s

Carmen: Marguerite Mérentié Le Remendado: Paul Dumontier

Don José: Agustarello A ff re Zuniga: Pierre Dupré

Micaëla: Aline Vallandri Moralès: M. Dulac

Escamillo: Henri Albers Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra-Comique

Frasquita: Marie Gantéri François Ruhlmann, conductor

Mercédès: Jeanne Billa-Azéma Recorded in 1911

Le Dancaïre: Hippolyte Belhomme Marston Pathé Opera Series 52019-2 (2 CDs)

Carmen: Germaine Cernay L'Orchestre National de la Radio-Diffusion

Don José: Raymond Berthaud Française

Micaëla: Ginette Guillamat Désiré-Emile Inghelbrecht, conductor

Escamillo: Lucien Lovano Live broadcast from Marseilles, 9 November 1942

Frasquita: Claudine Verneuil Bonus tracks: "L'Arlésienne" Suite No. 2 (no date

Mercédès: Jeanne de Faria or orchestra given); "Agnus Dei" sung by Carlo

Le Dancaïre: René Prot Ciabrini, 1998

Le Remendado: Jean Planel Malibran-Music (distributed by Qualiton)

Zuniga: Georges Alvès cdrg 172 (2 CDs)

Moralès: Paul Gaudin

Two fascinating old recordings of Carmen as opéra comique are with us on CD. After ninety-one years the Mérentié performance remains the only one on records to use virtually all of the original spoken dialogue, and it is a delightful education in an all-but-lost style as well. ¹ The 1942 Cernay-Inghelbrecht broadcast, new to me, cuts much of the dialogue but emerges as the most persuasive opéra-comique Carmen recorded since the acoustic era.

Carmen premiered in 1875 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Only seven months later at the Vienna premiere Guiraud's sung recitatives were substituted for the dialogue; it was this grand opéra that then conquered the world, though both versions remained popular in France. In 1950 international interest in the original score was somewhat aroused with the Solange Michel-André Cluytens recording, and now half a century later these two earlier performances demonstrate vividly the subtleties and charms of the original score.

The Opéra-Comique building of 1875 was an intimate house. Despite its occasional crowd scenes, Carmen is essentially a series of private confrontations. When the dialogue of the original is played with style and conviction, the music rises from it with breathtaking inevitability and is both colored and supported by the tone of the spoken exchanges, as the Mérentié performance brilliantly demonstrates. All of its cast members but one were Comique regulars, conducted on the recording by the company's longtime general manager, François Ruhlmann. Marguerite Mérentié is a splendid opéra-comique Carmen, with a seductive lyric voice and a sense of humor first suggested in the Habanera and later expanded in the "épinglette" encounter with Don José and in a Seguidilla that attracts as it lightly teases. Spoken or sung, her flirtation with Don José is unemphatic but fatally inviting. In this performance it all seems effortlessly done, and yet both the young soldier and we have been trapped. Carmen's anger with him at Lillas Pastia's is strikingly spontaneous—fierce and yet weightless somehow; and later when she sings of "la liberté" her voice has in it both mountain air and hot sun.

By act 3 this Carmen knows that she is bored, perhaps fatally, by Don José's demands. For a moment the specter of her death obsesses her. The Card Scene is full of interest: sung easily but with a naked sense of fate—hardly melodramatic, but unforgettable for its harsh clarity of view. In Seville she faces her lover with unswerving candor, but there is little heroism in this: better to die than betray one's own inescapable nature. Even at this moment Mérentié's Carmen is still sensual, still desirable, and still immovable. Thus it is that her lover is driven to murder.

No matter what the obstacles (and there are several in this recording), Mérentié manages to strike the note of magnetic disengagement. She never plays the role for melodrama, and is consistently direct, expressive, and convincing. Hers, I venture to suggest...