Bizet: Carmen (Duets & Arias)

Carmen - The Arias: the hits of the world's favourite opera, starring one the world's most popular singers: Andrea Bocelli.

Andrea Bocelli's "My Christmas" album was a huge hit at the end of last year, selling more than 3.200.000 copies worldwide with staggering successes in the USA, Canada, the UK, Poland….

Andrea Bocelli is the tenor audiences love to love. His sincerity, his commitment to the music he sings, and, of course, his arresting sound and touching delivery are generously in evidence in this Carmen, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung.

An outstanding cast joins Bocelli's Don José. Mezzo-soprano Marina Domashenko is a steamy Carmen, of whose Gypsy cigarette girl the Prague Post wrote, "This singer stuns the audience with her powerful, slightly throaty voice. She is both angry and cynical, yet extremely seductive."

The magnificent Bryn Terfel as Escamillo, the toreador who seduces Carmen away from Don José, is a match for any bull - and for any other singer who has ever sung this role.

Marina Domashenko's perfect foil is soprano Eva Mei, who brings lyric vulnerability to Micaela, the girl Don José spurns.

"The peculiar tragic nobility of Bocelli's voice is perfectly suited to the role of Don José, but the clinching elements are the supporting performances, particularly Marina Domashenko...whose plummily graceful tones bring just the right note of quixotic disdain to the [title] part; and Bryn Terfel, who delivers the "Toreador's Song" with a swashbuckling gusto." The Independent

"The Carmen herself will, for most of us, be a remarkable discovery. Her voice is an opulent contralto with an ample range upwards, and she knows how to lighten, how to smile and keep the music on its toes with a keen sense of rhythm...Altogether there is much to be said for her" Gramophone Magazine, June 2010