Rise Stevens as Carmen?

[MIFrost]

My local second-hand CD shop has the Reiner-conducted Carmen with Rise
Stevens, Robert Merrill and the tenor I always confuse with Richard
Tucker. It's from 1951 and on RCA. Anyone familiar with this? I
have three stereo recordings of Carmen that I'm happy with and would
consider this as an "alternative" if it has something "special" to
recommend it. Does it?

TIA

MIFrost

[wagnerfan]

Well its very well conducted by Reiner and has a certain nostalgic
value but I'm a little too young to appreciate that so I feel that
just about all of its components have been surpassed on other sets.
Wagner Fan

[El Klauso]

I wouldn't discount Reiner's taut direction, the choral work of young
Robert Shaw's group, the sturdiness and sonority of Merrill, or one of
the most famous performances of the title role. Stevens virtually
owned Carmen for a decade or so in the mid 20th century, so even if
her voice and charecterization are not your cup of tea, the recording
is a valuable insight window to the tastes of an earlier era.

[Kerrison]

Talking of Stevens in French opera, she made an RCA highlights LP of
"Samson and Delilah" with Jan Peerce, Robert Merrill, and Stokowski
and the NBC SO in 1954, and then made a second one for RCA four or
five years later with Mario del Monaco, this time with Fausto Cleva
and the Met Opera Orchestra. I wonder why she made two recordings of
presumably the same numbers within a comparatively short space of
time, and whether her second recording is better than the first.
Having said that, I can think of other tenors of the time who'd have
been far preferable to listen to than either Peerce or del Monaco.

[jeff...@comcast.net]

You also might consider this Rise Stevens version:

http://www.amazon.com/Bizet-Carmen/dp/B0023GV314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1270292955&sr=8-1-spell

Risë Stevens, Lucine Amara, Mario Del Monaco, Frank Guarrera,
Orchestra E Coro Del Teatro Metropolitan, Dimitri Mitropoulos

[Allen]

That's about the time that one of her breasts made its public debut.
According to news stories at the time, one of them popped out of the
low-cut Carmen costume she was wearing during a Met performance. She
just tucked it back in and kept on singing.
Allen

[Matthew B. Tepper]

"jeff...@msn.com" <jeff...@comcast.net> appears to have caused the
following letters to be typed in
news:adb728b7-3f4f-43c4...@5g2000yqj.googlegroups.com:

> You also might consider this Rise Stevens version:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Bizet-Carmen/dp/B0023GV314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmu
> sic&qid=1270292955&sr=8-1-spell
>

> Risė Stevens, Lucine Amara, Mario Del Monaco, Frank Guarrera,

> Orchestra E Coro Del Teatro Metropolitan, Dimitri Mitropoulos

Presumably 12 January 1957. The price is low, but how's the transfer?

--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
Read about "Proty" here: http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/proty.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of my employers

[Dontait...@aol.com]

I remember when the stereo LP of "Samson" highlights was issued
around 1959. For record critics at the time, of course, stereo was
what counted; some implied that a mono recording was now worthless and
needed to be discarded in favor of progress. Even if the mono was only
about five years old, and was conducted by Leopold Stokowski (who
didn't "distort" anything and in fact conducted both idiomatically and
brilliantly). And del Monaco was a far bigger "name" than Jan Peerce
and a bigger name at the Met.

I read somewhere, but confess that I can't remember where (would
somone know?), that some of the 1954 singers were unhappy because
Stokowski required them to sing their roles as he believed they should
be sung. Fausto Cleva was a good opera conductor, but, umm, he wasn't
a master such as Leopold Stokowski.

Don Tait