Search - Carmen on DVD

Yes and No

William D. Larson | 07/15/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Where to begin? Angela Bonfitto has to be the sexiest, best-looking and most passionate Carmen I have encountered, and I have seen many. By-and-large, she makes all other Carmens pale. Her voice is decent but not great--and yet, the audio portion of this dvd may have something to do with that: the audio is bad, bad, bad. (Although listed as being in stereo, it is actually monaural with very brief moments of stereo, as though there was a bad connection in the console or such. Apparently, budget constraints prevented them from redoing things in this live recording.) The production comes across as being close-to-amateurish, and yet: This is not all bad, as the simplicity of it lets the drama get expressed through the music and performers (especially Bonfitto). I don't know whether to count this as a plus or a minus, but I lean toward "plus".
On to the video: The video would be fine if the video producer/engineer would have left well enough alone, but he didn't: MANY instances of "special effects" involving images overprinted on the main image. For me this was distracting and irritating--I don't know what he was thinking, but it may have been, "I need to dress up this video to compensate for the amateurish production values."
Don Jose (Jevgenij Taruntsov) is quite good, as is Escamillo (Giuseppe Altomare), and the rest of the cast is fine. Interestingly, this is a production of the opera company in Novara, Italy. Never heard of it? Nor had I. Such a small town. Frankly, I tip my hat to them: They are competing with the big boys here--good for them."