Performance is good. Docnanyi is in control and Selia is in good voice German makes the lyrical quality much more sensual Forgive my spelling

I was 11 years old when we did this amazing Opera. I was one of the kids on 1st and 4th Act. Anja Silva was such beauty friendly woman to us, but she was married with Dohnanyi, so no chance for me :-) So i felt in love with Ellen Shade. :-)We´ve had such a great time at the opera, with the rehearshals and this premiere and all following concerts. Thanks to the unknown recorder for this amazing recording on a piece of history. I have goosebombs when i was listening, and my eyes are wet.

From the sound of the voices I thought this was taken from an in-house tape. The voices are slightly recessed and the dialogue is often difficult to hear clearly. Yet if one listens all the way through the final track a radio announcer gives us the complete cast. The sound isn't that bad and the performance very good.Silja's spoken dialogue enchants the audience; their laughter tells us she must been enthralling onstage. She sings a very musical Carmen, one not far removed from what Dietrich or Lenya might have done with the part. Hopferwieser was Alwa in Silja's studio recording of Lulu and he is just as good here. Other Joses give us a more beautiful voice, but Hopferwieser gives us the character. Shade is a strong, assertive Micaela. Peter Wimberger is a sturdy, macho Escamillo (not Koniger as listed above, he's the Morales). The supporting cast is full of character as is the chorus. Dohnanyi gives us the Oeser edition of the score. The entire performance is alive with theatricality and nuance.This may be Silja's only extant Carmen. It's worth the effort to hear her do it. She is definitely her own person, just like Carmen.

How does "Carmen" sound in German? Surprisingly persuasive. The same could be said of Anja Silja's interpretation of the title role. She's a sex-kitten Carmen, free and easy rather than fraught with the heavy tragic overtones that began to be imposed on the character around the time of this performance. (Only some shrieking at the climax detracts from her artistry.) Conductor Christoph von Dohanyi leads a fleet and idiomatic account, making a convincing case for the many variants in Bizet's score that Fritz Oeser unearthed. Ellen Shade's Micaela is gorgeous and Josef Hopferwieser's Don Jose has plenty of squillo. Peter Wimberger makes a surprisingly persuasive Escamillo and Dieter Weller's Remendado and Dieter Slembeck's Zuniga head a notably solid supporting cast. Thanks to director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, there's a healthy amount of spoken dialogue, although it's a distant muddle most of the time.

What an exciting account of the played-out \""Carmen.\"" Anja Silja, incontestably one of history's greatest singing-actresses, has been long renown for her immense repertoire, and here we have her only account of Bizet's gypsy, in a 1973 production directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, in German translation.She is ferocious and seductive in almost equal measure. The very color of her voice is, indeed, both chaste and debauched. With this Opera Depot recording, we are faced with the fact that Mme Silja was one of the great exponents of Carmen, and it is a pity this was indeed her only traversal of the role.The rest of the cast are excellent; the tenor, Josef Hopferwieser, will be familiar to connoisseurs as the Alwa in the 1976 Silja/von Dohnányi recording of \""Lulu,\"" for Decca.

I think I got the (almost) complete cast of that performance. I took it from “Opernwelt”, August 1973. Here it comes:Carmen: Anja Silja, Don José: Josef Hopferwieser, Escamillo: Peter Wimberger (!!!), Micaela: Ellen Shade, Frasquita: Olga Verecki, Mercédès: Pari Samar, Danciro: Dieter Weller, Remendado: Willy Müller, Zuniga: Dieter Slembeck, Moralès: ?