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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
This is the most popular opera production so far on DVD, surpassing even Franco Zeffirelli's lavish, symbol-laden La Traviata. It is an exciting Carmen, with a young-looking Placido Domingo in top form for a role he has sung hundreds of times. For Julia Migenes, it was her first performance in a role she would have trouble performing in an opera house. Her voice does not fit easily into Carmen's range, and she spent months training it, very successfully, before singing the role in a recording studio where the soundtrack was taped before the film was shot. Casting her in the role was a gamble, but it worked; she is a convincing actress--even better than Maria Ewing in the competing DVD edition from Covent Garden, though Ewing acts very well and has a more appropriate voice.
This movie version was filmed on location, conveying a kind of atmosphere, a sense of space, movement, and presence hard to achieve in a staged performance shot for television. It takes the action out of doors for many scenes. The opening titles are superimposed on the bloody conclusion of a bullfight. The changing of the guard in the opening scene, with the boys' chorus playing soldier, the crowd scenes, the dance number that opens Act II, the panoramic scenery of the smugglers' mountain hideout, all benefit from the freedom granted by movie cameras. But the music is, on the whole, more effectively performed in the Covent Garden production, which also handles close-up shots better, perhaps because it was directed with a small screen in mind. The opera house atmosphere will make hard-core opera fans feel more at home. The movie version uses the opera's original opera comique form with some spoken dialogue rather than recitatives. --Joe McLellan
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Excellent !
Excellent performance by all the actors and opera singers. It was a very good idea to transport the classic opera into a movies version. This adaptation is not new, nevertheless, is a masterpiece for all times. Congratulations !
Rating: - The finest production yet
This is an absolutely must have for any lovers of the opera Carmen. I originally purchased it as a VHS recording and have tried for years to locate it on DVD. The DVD version is rare indeed and the high cost (I paid $134.77) is worth every penny. The sound is highly superior to the VHS version though mine may have been played so long it sound has been affected. It was purchased from a video store. This presentation of the opera is shown as a movie. It contains close-ups not possible in a stage presentation ... Read More
Rating:  - Gritty realism juxtaposed with the artifice of opera
This film version of the great Bizet opera aims for gritty realism right from the start - during the opening credits a bull is impaled and killed during a bull-fight - of course this realism goes out the window as soon as the characters open their mouths and begin to sing!
This is a well-mounted and well-sung production but the juxtaposition of a realistic setting with the artifice that is opera just doesn't work. The cast are not helped by the obvious lip-synching especially noticable during close ... Read More
Rating: - one of the most beautiful versions of Carmen I have seen......
This 1983 version of Bizet's Carmen, directed by the great Italian filmmaker, Franco Zeferelli, is wonderfully done. We really don't see enough of the great soprano, Julia Migenes, who is seen here as the title character, opposite the marvelous Placido Domingo, as Don Jose, her jealous lover. This film glows with exhuberance and fire and the cast does a fantastic job. I definitely reccomend this film to those who consider themselves opera fans, as well as those who have never seen an opera before. For starters, ... Read More
Rating: - Amazing, not to be missed
An amazing visual feast - a palette of tawny burnt golds and sunsplashed white, relieved by the earth tones of the villagers' dresses and the grey-green of the uniforms...no pinks or purples here! Just a dash of red in the blooded bulls...and the only blue is the muted blue of Michaela's dress (the virginal one?) And those incredible towns and villages, and the vast striated rockfaces in the countryside. This is the land where the relentess sun beats into brains and perhaps turns everyone a little mad.
Wonderful ... Read More
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