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A superb, raw, wild Blu-ray "Carmen"!


playtheblues

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The culture snobs here - if there are any other than myself, which I doubt - would rather not want to be found dead with anything "lower" than a Mozart opera on the (vinyl of course) disc player or T.S Eliot's "Four Quartets" on the bedside table. Bizet's "Carmen" would be far too common, too popular and too "easy listening".

 

But then we, the culture snobs, would miss something. The last two evenings I have been balancing on the edge of my seat, sipping my Remy Martin (XO of course) watching on Blu-Ray the Covent Garden production of "Carmen", directed by Antonio Pappano with an incredible fire and precision at the same time. "Carmen" herself is irresistebly seductive (though rather fat) as portrayed by soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, Jonas Kaufmann is a perfect, by passion obsessed Don Jose and then we have Ildebrando D'Arcangelo as Escamillo - his entree on a black horse, singing that famous aria, is unforgettable - and we completely understand why Carmen turns to him instead of loser Jose (I cannot handle les accents, sorry).

 

In all a raw, vibrant, marvelously exciting "Carmen" on Blu-Ray. And the sound on DTS-HD Master is a perfect match to the visual delights.

 

Don't miss this one!

 

And thinking about it: isn't there one or another Carmen and a jealous, loser like Don Jose out here in the Bangkok nightlife jungle? Steven Leather has already discovered one of those Joses in his "Private Dancer" but you would do better with the real thing, the Bizet version of basically the same story instead.

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"Carmen" is the most performed of all operas, so I have not tried too keep track of various productions, there must be some really good ones among them - and this must be one of the most vivid and dramatic ones.

 

A correction: I wrote that it is directed by Antonio Pappano, it should be conducted of course. Keep an eye, or rather an ear, on this conductor, he is becoming one of the conductor super stars if he already isn't that.

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No, you need a dedicated Blu-ray player. A good one will cost you a minimum of 15 000 baht. The Pioneer 320 will probably be my next up-grade from my present Samsung 1500. Unfortunately Blu-ray discs cost 1000 baht and up.

 

Contrary to what many people are made to believe you don't need a "full HD" (1080p) monitor to fully enjoy Blu-ray. My Pioneer 42 inch has a native resolution of 720p and it displays Blu-ray discs brilliantly. And even on my old CRT TV in the bedroom, with component inputs instead of HDMI, Blu-ray looks wonderful, but actually this Philips Pixel Plus 2 model accepts hi-def signals (and on CRTs almost everything looks better than on most flat TVs, except perhaps for the Pioneer Kuro plasma models. CRTs sell for nothing these days so there are real bargains out there if you can live with a smaller screen).

 

My experience is that movies still are good enough on normal DVDs and of course much cheaper. Toshiba has a new DVD player model, 500XDE which is said to do fantastically sharp upscaling by a new algoritm. It sells for 6990 baht. My Oppo 980H, same price, is also doing a good up-scaling job. I never up-scale to more than 720 p, no advantage to overkill the upscaling.

 

But on ballet and opera and music, nothing can compete with Blu-ray. The sound too is fantastic. Do your home work before buying, though.

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