Favourites,
Georges Bizet
He may not have been quite as astonishingly prolific as Schubert and Mozart, (both of whom died at around the same age), but Georges Bizet wrote a fair amount of music in his 36 years, and comparatively little of it is well represented on record: his songs and solo piano music in particular are utterly delightful and well worth discovering, and though recordings are few and far between the few that do exist do him full justice!
One work in particular, though, dominates his discography (and in fact must be one of the most recorded works in the repertoire): the 1875 opera Carmen, which was such a failure at its premiere that the resultant stress is reported to have contributed to Bizet's early death. The roles of the free-spirited cigarette-maker and the upright young soldier who becomes obsessed with her have attracted some of the greatest mezzos (and occasionally sopranos) and tenors of the past century. There are so many facets to Bizet's elusive heroine, and so many recordings which emphasise different aspects of her personality and of the score (grand opera? opéra comique? something between the two?) that I'd gladly have penned a feature dedicated to the myriad recordings of this one work! I've made my ultimate choice below, but I wouldn't be without Claudio Abbado with Teresa Berganza and Plácido Domingo, Thomas Schippers's set with a fearsome Regina Resnik and Mario del Monaco, and Simon Rattle's recent version with the appropriately mismatched Magdalena Kožená and Jonas Kaufmann.
Operas
A supremely tough one to call, but Agnes Baltsa's grainy, middle-weight mezzo on this 1982 studio recording is just what I want in this role, and José Carreras does passion and pathos to perfection as her nemesis. Herbert von Karajan's expansive, flexible reading of the score is very much in grand opera rather than opera comique trademark, with the tension in the final scene in particular stretched to breaking-point in the very best sense.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
André Cluytens keeps things very much on the move on this landmark 1950 recording with an exclusively Francophone cast from the Opéra-Comique: Michel Solange is all insouciant, cool sensuality as the heroine, Raoul Jobin a bright-toned, palpably neurotic José and Martha Angelici a proper soubrette ingenue as Micaela. Fine sound, too, thanks to Mark Obert-Thorn's transfers.
Available Format: 2 CDs
Caught at Covent Garden in 2007, Francesca Zambello's lavish, largely traditional, lifestock-heavy production boasts two supreme (and very telegenic) singing actors in Anna Caterina Antonacci and Jonas Kaufmann - their after-hours rendez-vous at Lillas Pastia's is borderline Not Safe For Work, whilst the final showdown outside the bullring is genuinely terrifying. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo is classy, not crass, as Escamillo, Tanya McCallin's costumes look gorgeous, and Antonio Pappano generates plenty of heat in the pit.
Available Format: DVD Video
With a plot that's not unlike The Barber of Seville, this early one-act farce (surely the only opera to include an ensemble in praise of an omelette!) is a frothy, whimsical delight: an all-French cast and the recently resurrected L'Orchestre Lyrique Région Avignon-Provence bring out all its skittish charm in this 2013 recording.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Choral
Two early competition-pieces receive sterling advocacy from the Orchestre National de Lille under Jean-Claude Casadesus on this 2010 recording: the cantata Clovis et Clotilde (which after some controversy won Bizet the coveted Prix de Rome in 1857) and the Te Deum, submitted the following year for the Rodrigues Prize. The voluptuous-toned soprano Katarina Jovanovic rides the orchestra with ease in both works.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Orchestral Works
Sir Thomas Beecham conducts authoritative accounts of the Suites from incidental music for L'Arlesienne and the youthful Symphony in C (written when the composer was just 17 and never performed during his lifetime, receiving its premiere in 1935). Recorded in 1961 (Symphony) and 1967 (Suites).
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Piano Works
Perhaps better known in its orchestral incarnation (Bizet orchestrated five numbers; the others were completed after his death by Roy Douglas and Hershy Kay, and the whole later choreographed by George Balanchine), Jeux d'Enfants emerges in glorious clarity here in the hands of piano duo Claire Désert and Emmanuel Strosser.
Available Format: CD
This two-disc collection of all of Bizet's piano works (most of which are very rare on disc) really is a little box of gems: listening 'blind', a lot of it sounds like Fauré or perhaps Chopin with a French accent, and Julia Severus is perfectly attuned to every shift of style in these miniatures.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Songs
The young Cecilia Bartoli includes five works by Bizet in this 1996 all-French recital with Myung Whun Chung; 'Adieux de l'hotesse Arabe' (perhaps his best-known song) is suitably sultry and the hesitant eroticism of 'La Coccinelle' (about a young boy removing a ladybird from his beloved's neck!) is captured with charm.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Though the two songs mentioned above and a handful of others often make an appearance on recital-discs, the majority of Bizet's songs remain very elusive on record: for a more comprehensive survey of Bizet's songs, try the dark-voiced German lyric mezzo Yvi Jänicke and her pianist Thomas Hans.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
