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Opera videos come essentially in two categories: movies, such as the 1984 Carmen, directed by Francesco Rosi and starring Julia Migenes and Placido Domingo, and opera house productions filmed for television, such as this 1991 Carmen from London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Carmen is the most popular opera of all, and these two videos are both bestsellers, embodying effectively the values that make Carmen unique. Choosing between them is not easy. Musically, both are excellent. Domingo has more name recognition than Luis Lima, and Rosi's film catches him in top form. But Lima is vocally and visually a precise embodiment of Don José, the soldier seduced and betrayed by Carmen and finally driven to murder her. Migenes (in Rosi's film) gives a superb portrayal of the capricious Gypsy woman, but for my taste Maria Ewing's Carmen is even more vivid, natural, and subtly nuanced. Leontina Vaduva is exactly right as the innocent country girl Micaela, and Gino Quilico swaggers convincingly through the role of the bullfighter Escamillo. The advantage of the film is presence and realism, particularly outdoor landscapes with plenty of space for the soldiers and smugglers to move around. Escamillo faces a real bull in a three-dimensional Plaza de Toros, something necessarily kept offstage in the Covent Garden production. A danger not always avoided in the film production is overstatement. There is more subtlety in Covent Garden's staging--there has to be--as well as a higher overall level of musicianship. And expert camera work gives the Covent Garden scenery a striking air of three-dimensional realism. If I had to live with only one of these Carmens, I would choose Ewing and Covent Garden. But I would miss many striking moments in Rosi's film. --Joe McLellan
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