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Carmen Jones: original soundtrack to the Preminger film

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This recording of Bizet's and Oscar Hammerstein's Carmen Jones will always hold a special place in the heart of the piece's fans, as it is, unlike the others, not the cast recording of the Broadway show (whether the original cast as on Carmen Jones (1943 Original Broadway Cast) [CAST RECORDING] [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED] or from subsequent revivals, as Carmen Jones (1962 Studio Recording) [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED] with Grace Bumbry or the London 1992 revival Carmen Jones [SOUNDTRACK] [CAST RECORDING]), but the original soundtrack of the superb 1954 Preminger film, through which most of the fans, I suppose (including myself) discovered it. It doesn't include all the numbers from the musical (which are I believe the same as in the opera), and at 46:23 the timing is short by CD standards, but what we have is superb.

The musical standard is excellent. For opera lovers, it will always be a special experience to hear young (she was 19 when she recorded it) Marilynn Horne, still in her soprano un-self, e.g. before she turned into the chesty coloratura alto that made such a huge career in Haendel to Rossini... and Bizet (it's fun to compare this with her "official" recording of Carmen, with the Met forces conducted (in a highly if not unexpectedly controversial way) by Leonard Bernstein on Carmen or Bizet: Carmen. I don't know what career LeVern Hutcherson (Joe) had in musicals or opera (not much information is provided on the net), but here he displays a fine mixture of head voice in the sweetest passages and power when needed, and I find him to be entirely up to the demands of the part's vocal range and character, and the same is true with heavyweight champion Marvin Hayes (Husky Miller). Only Olga James as Cindy Lou (e.g. Micaela) and Pearl Bailey as Frankie (Mercedes) served in the film both as actor and singer. Bailey, in the drum dance, is the only exception to the opera-trained vocal cast, and she has the superb husky voice of a true jazz singer (the number was transposed down to fit her voice). Juilliard-trained Olga James doesn't have a big voice, she even displays a certain sweet frailty, but it is entirely appropriate to the character.

But besides the individual qualities of the voices, the important point is how well they are suited to the film characters and situations. They do not sound like big operatic voices, they smack of "real life" (and Horne is especially remarkable in that respect, incredibly lively and saucy throughout, a magnificent vocal impersonation of Dorothy Dandridge), and, if you didn't know from the disc and film credits, it would be hard to tell that they did not belong to the actual actors. In the notes to the original LP, retained in this CD reissue, Hammerstein recounts how the singers were called in to take part in the actors' rehearsals, to imbue themselves and their singing with the situations of the film.

A few words on the reasons of my fascination and infatuation with Hammerstein's Carmen Jones. I have a deep fondness for Bizet's Carmen - for the music, but also for the libretto and lyrics of Meilhac and Halévy. I find the plot to be masterful. With its addition, to the original short story of Mérimée, of the character of Micaela, often (and wrongly) seen as mawkish, and the development of the character of Escamillo, it creates a perfect balance in the quartet of principals, and its clear-cut contrasting between constraint (Don José, the Village, the Mother, the Army, Religion, daytime, sexual frustration) and liberty (Carmen, sexual freedom, the bullfighting the smugglers, the night, the mountain) is altogether simple, all-embracing and highly effective. But even more, I find the lyrics superb, so natural and organic that one forgets (and the singers apparently never pay attention to the fact) that they are written in verse and rhyme. Still, for all my love for the composition, I cannot ignore that Bizet hasn't always very skillfully put the lyrics to music. Oftentimes his rhythms are awkward, as if he had (and he probably has) first written the tunes, then forced the lyrics on them as a kid hammers the cylinder block into the square hole. Witness the beginning of Don José's Flower Song, with its high note and resulting accent on "Flétrie et sèCHE, cette fleur...", which makes no sense and even hampers understanding (equivalent in English would be "wilTED and dry, this flower...". Such examples are aplenty.

Well, the beauty of Hammerstein's contribution is not only, and in my mind not mainly in his skillfully turning the plot from 19th Century Spain to 1943 southern USA, but in his lyrics. Not only is his knack for imaginative rhyme awesomely fun (my favorite is rooster / refuse to), his lyrics are so natural-sounding, so expertly and precisely fitted to Bizet's melodies that one could easily think that the music was first written for these very lyrics, and that Meilhac and Halévy were the hack writers of an approximate translation, the kind that were often played in French opera houses in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A striking example is the "chanson bohémienne" ("les tringles des sistres tintaient") which opens Act II, transformed by Hammerstein into Frankie's drum dance. The refrain in that song is "beat out that rhythm on the drum", with its characteristic rhythm of three quarter-notes followed by four sixteenth-notes and ending on a half-note: the rhythm of the melody so minutely overlaps the rhythm of the spoken phrase that it is hard to think that it wasn't written precisely for these words. And the words with Meilhac and Halévy ? You'll never guess, even in your worst nightmares: "La la la la-la-la-la la!" Great effort! No wonder it took two of you boys to come up with that result !

This French-originated reissue has retained the original LP text by Hammerstein himself, but lost the little recollection by Marylinn Horne. The French text is an interesting essay on the Preminger film. Sound is 1954 mono, in a very good remastering, with moderate tape hiss. Go to the French sister company: it's much cheaper there.