Carmen: "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" (Elina Garanca)

Two interesting clips, there!

As for the first: Elina Garanca is a consummate artist, but she is a cool and intellectual person. One would think of her as singing Mahler, or Schubert, Bach even. Although she brings her huge talent to Carmen, singing the role with intelligence and empathy and so cannot possibly disappoint any audience, for me she is not a natural Carmen.

The second clip is even more interesting. (The sound and video quality is atrocious, unfortunately). I never knew that Anna Netrebko was ever involved in a production of Carmen, because I could not imagine her being there. But she creates a whole new persona of a flirtatious and sexy Michaella, and being Netrebko, she pulls it off magnificently.

The conductor is the Latvian Andris Nelsons, (Elina Garanca is Latvian as well) and he goes for a slightly faster tempo than usual, with a dynamic and metronomic drive, which I think works well.

What is very strange is that they sing partly in German and partly in French! The German sounds wrong and doesn't fit all. The Vienna State Opera has become notorious for staging same very strange productions, over the past few years.

I don't like the tenor much. He has a quality voice, but although Don José was maybe a bit of a nincompoop, he still was a bona fide soldier, not a member of a boys band.

Nadia Krasteva has an unbelievable voice and also the body for Carmen. She disappoints as an actress. For Carmen, it is perhaps more important to be an actress than to be a singer. In a way, Carmen is a bit of a "spirits meid". (When I was still in primary school, I attended a performance of Carmen with the Welsh mezzo, Joyce Blackham as Carmen, who chose to wear an exceptionally low cut bodice. During one of her gyrations, one of her tits fell out, upon which she told her bemused Don José: Well, don't just stand there. Kiss them! That's what you'd expect of a Carmen).

Joyce Blackham:


For me, the Carmen of all time is Madeleine Horn:


This is what Don José should sound like, when not sung by a wimp:

 I found a full length  with English subtitles



Another one

Here is a MUCH, MUCH better version of the same production.