Carmen: Duets & Arias

Carmen: Duets & Arias is an album released in 2010 by Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli. The album is a collection of arias of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, including duets with Welsh bass-baritone, Bryn Terfel, Russian mezzo-soprano Marina Domashenko, and Italian soprano Eva Mei, from the French opéra comique.

Background

In 2005, Bocelli recorded the opera Carmen. Myung-whun Chung conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Chœur de Radio France for the recording. Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, mezzo-soprano Marina Domashenko, and soprano Eva Mei, were also part of the Ensemble.

In 2008, Bocelli played the role of Don José on stage, opposite Hungarian mezzo-soprano Ildikó Komlósi, as Carmen, at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, in Rome, for four nights, from June 17 to June 28. Bocelli released the complete opera recording of Carmen, in Italy, in the same year.

In March 2010, the recording was released Internationally.Carmen: Duets & Arias contains highlights of arias and duets of that recording.

Clavier-Übung III

The Clavier-Übung III, sometimes referred to as the German Organ Mass, is a collection of compositions for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, started in 1735–36 and published in 1739. It is considered Bach's most significant and extensive work for organ, containing some of his musically most complex and technically most demanding compositions for that instrument.

In its use of modal forms, motet-style and canons, it looks back to the religious music of masters of the stile antico, such as Frescobaldi, Palestrina, Lotti and Caldara. At the same time, Bach was forward-looking, incorporating and distilling modern baroque musical forms, such as the French-style chorale.

The work has the form of an Organ Mass: between its opening and closing movements—the prelude and "St Anne" fugue in E-flat, BWV 552—are 21 chorale preludes, BWV 669–689, setting parts of the Lutheran mass and catechisms, followed by four duets, BWV 802–805. The chorale preludes range from compositions for single keyboard to a six-part fugal prelude with two parts in the pedal.

Duets (Kenny Rogers album)

Duets was a special 1984 album released by Liberty Records from Kenny Rogers. It was issued after Rogers left the label and signed to RCA Records.

Overview

Duets opens with "We've Got Tonight", a hit 1983 single with Sheena Easton. Side two begins with another classic duet, "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer" with Kim Carnes from the 1980 album Gideon. All of the remaining eight songs on the album are with Dottie West and come from his two collaboration albums with West, including the 1978 hit "Every Time Two Fools Collide" from the 1978 album of the same name. However, their duet "What Are We Doin' in Love" (a #1 country and top 40 pop hit) from 1981 is missing.

Also included on this album is Sonny and Cher's "All I Ever Need Is You". Rogers' producer Larry Butler co-wrote "(Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song" with Chips Moman. "'Til I Can Make It On My Own" and "That's the Way It Could Have Been" are two Tammy Wynette numbers.

While this is a compilation album, there was still a single released from it. "Together Again", one of the many duets with West and which first appeared on Classics, reached #19 on the US country chart and #29 in Canada.

Duets (Dizzy Gillespie album)

Duets is an album by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie featuring Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt recorded in 1957 and released on the Verve label. The recordings on this album are from the same sessions and with the same personnel that produced the earlier released Sonny Side Up album which had Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins playing simultaneously with Dizzy Gillespie. On the Duets album, as the name implies, Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins played separately with Dizzy Gillespie.

Reception

The Allmusic review states "the highlights are many".

Track listing

All compositions by Dizzy Gillespie

Personnel

References

Carmen (verse)

In Ancient Rome, the term "carmen" was generally used to signify a verse; but in its proper sense, it referred to a spell or prayer, form of expiation, execration, etc. Surviving examples include the Carmen Arvale and the Carmen Saliare.

Purposes

Spells and incantations were used for a variety of purposes. If a spell was intended to harm someone, the State could interfere to protect him. For instance, it was not unusual for a farmer whose crops had failed to accuse another farmer of having, by a carmen, lured the crops away. Tibullus, in a poem in which he complains that an old woman has bewitched Marathus, takes the opportunity to recount various feats of witches, such as transferring crops from one field to another. Similarly, Pliny the Elder records in Naturalis Historia (XVIII. 8) that a certain freedman, Furius, by using better implements and better methods than his neighbor, obtained richer crops from a smaller strip of land. A neighbor compelled Furius to go before the tribes and accused him of having bewitched his field. But when the tribes saw his sturdy slaves and his implements of witchcraft—hoes, rakes, and ploughs—they acquitted him.

Carmen (2003 film)

Carmen is a 2003 Spanish drama film directed by Vicente Aranda. The script was written by Aranda and Joaquim Jordà adapting the classic romance of the same name by Prosper Mérimée. Director Vicente Aranda based the plot on Mérimée's original 1847 novella about jealousy and passion, not its famous operatic adaptation by Bizet from 1875, changing some details about the love story between Carmen (Paz Vega) and José (Leonardo Sbaraglia). As in the novella, author Mérimée (Jay Benedict) is portrayed as a French writer who finds the "real" Carmen in early 19th century Spain.

Plot

While traveling through Andalusia, Spain in 1830, Prosper Mérimée, a French writer, meets José, a wanted criminal. José ends up condemned to death by garroting. The day before José is going to be executed, Mérimée, who has befriended the bandit, visits him in prison. From his jail cell, José begins to narrate his tragic story to the sympathetic writer.

A Burlesque on Carmen

A Burlesque on Carmen is Charlie Chaplin's thirteenth and final film for Essanay Studios, released as Carmen on December 18, 1915. Chaplin played the leading man and Edna Purviance played Carmen. The film is a parody of the overacted Cecil B. DeMille Carmen of 1915 which was itself an interpretation of the popular novella Carmen by Prosper Mérimée. Composer Hugo Riesenfeld wrote the music for both the DeMille and the Chaplin films, based on George Bizet's opera Carmen.

Chaplin's original version was a tightly paced two-reeler, but in 1916 after Chaplin had moved to Mutual, Essanay reworked the film into a four-reel version called A Burlesque on Carmen, or Burlesque on 'Carmen', adding discarded footage and new scenes involving a subplot about a gypsy character played by Ben Turpin. This longer version was deeply flawed in pacing and continuity, not representative of Chaplin's initial conception. Chaplin sued Essanay but failed to stop the distribution of the longer version; Essanay's tampering with this and other of his films contributed significantly to Chaplin's bitterness about his time there. The presence of Essanay's badly redone version is likely the reason that Burlesque on Carmen is among the least known of Chaplin's works. Historian Ted Okuda calls the two-reel original version the best film of Chaplin's Essanay period, but derides the longer version as the worst.