Carmen

Cameraman Pasqualino De Santis' muted colours provide a suitable frame for Rosi's mixed realistic and balletic treatment of Bizet's opera, which climaxes in the symbolically red-clad Carmen goading her maddened victim into murder on the sun-baked sand. Lorin Maazel, heading the Orchestre National de France, conducts a musically first-rate performance; both leading men are, well, mature, but Domingo's bemused passion as the simple soldier is underpinned by magnificent burnished tones. The warm-voiced Carmen, Migenes-Johnson, fleetingly resembling a de-beaked Streisand, recalls a Broadway background in her engaging bump-and-grind concept of sexuality - a reminder that Carmen is simply the best musical ever written. Hugely enjoyable for opera buff and non-buff alike. MHoy.