Last night we finished watching that production of
Carmen from the Opéra-Comique. Like the Met production with Garanca and Alagna, there were many good things and things that irritated me, primarily the putrid video direction. At the climax of the Act Four duet, just before Carmen is murdered, the video jumps from a closeup of Don Jose and Carmen to a view from the back of the house for no reason and then jumps back to the killing, but the entire intensity of the scene was destroyed.
This performance seems to use the Robert Didion critical edition, which - with three exceptions - uses the score played on opening night in 1875 at the Opéra-Comique, so after watching the video, I checked out the score. It contains all the spoken dialogue as well and inserts three sections of music (the children's chorus and two sections in the entrance chorus of cigarette girls) that were cut in rehearsal. Since the traditional
Carmen performed in the last 100 years was assembled by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death, Didion has removed all of Giraud's recitatives, revised orchestrations, and cuts.
In case anyone's interested, here is the Didion edition:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/3795763118/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
