My friend, Sonny, has just (9 days ago, in my universe) put up a new post on the opera Carmen at his blog Opera Recordings. A place, where he writes about opera recordings up in order to archive them. In his words “You see, if I just write them down in a diary or something, then it will all just be forgotten. This way, at least someone somewhere may stumble upon my blog and gain some small information, or even pleasure, out of it.” I hope his posts will be helpful and enjoyable to someone.

Check it out here.

Here’s a teaser:

No greater contrast could there be to Victoria de los Angeles’ Carmen than Callas’. Callas manages to make Carmen a very unattractive character – cold, dour, sour. The great tragedian in Callas turns Carmen into a great tragic figure, but so turned off are you from the start that you don’t want to hear about it to the end. True, no one makes you sit up at the very first words of Carmen’s entry onto the stage the way Callas does, and no one sings the Card Song (in which Carmen realizes that her death has been foretold) with such a gripping sense of foreboding and brooding. But you just don’t buy her Habanera, about love being like a bird and so on. This Carmen has never experienced love, or passion, or even a moment’s joy anywhere in her life. This Carmen is not even interested in Don Jose, but eyes him distantly from a corner and swallows him in the course of the opera as a means to making her own pact with her destiny……