Reading Ned Rorem's essay on Bizet's Carmen, I can understand how he can say, even while admitting that Carmen is a "chef d'oeuvre", that it "does not make my mouth water. (No offense, neither does Schubert.) I like everything about it but it. .... One can admit to the fact of, and even cheer, certain universal marvels without needing them, while in the private heart one elevates to Parnassus lesser works which merely (merely?) satisfy."  I'm not sure I'd join him in this, although it's true I haven't sought out the opera very actively, except for a recent listen to the unusual recording (Prêtre conducting) with Callas late in her career.   The movie with Plácido Domingo as José, though, is memorable even though I haven't seen it since its first release, several decades ago now.  But I definitely can't join Rorem in his opinion that "There are no flukes in art.  Yet Carmen is a fluke.  Its high quality, if not its style, is incongruous in Bizet's catalogue."  Bizet was in his 37th year when he died of a heart attack (three months after the premiere of Carmen).  It's just as likely that Carmen was Bizet breaking through, not all that late, to his full power as composer, a power amply presaged by the best moments in his early work.  Rorem says that "Even his best works---the young Symphony, Jeux d'Enfants, parts of The Pearl Fishers---are in the salonistic genre of his period."  Well, I'm motivated to get to know the Symphony and Jeux by this.  And I suppose there is something salonistic, perhaps occasionally slightly cheesy, in parts of the Pearl Fishers.  More seriously, not all of Pearl Fishers is inspired...although good, transparent conducting, well recorded like Dervaux' in the 1960 Paris studio version with Nicolai Gedda as Nadir, Charles Blanc as Zurga, and Janine Micheau as Leila reveals plenty of beauty throughout.  And I guess my taste is somewhat more tolerant than Rorem's for the "salonistic" in music, and especially French music where Rorem admits "my taste buds crave a Frenchness that did not yet exist, a longing for the almost edible sadness that resides in the sharp seventh recipes of Debussy and Ravel."  Well, I find these delectable too (as I do the recipes with ninths thrown in, or a dash of pentatonicism), although not only when sadness is at issue.  But I sense that the modal moods of Debussy and Ravel show light, but important, traces of nineteenth-century "salonistic" influences, even, I think, of the Bizet of Carmen and the Pearl Fishers. I'll admit that the prismatic aperçus and pellucid vistas of Debussy and Ravel usually surpass the slightly overripe, though oh-so-tasty, sensuality of a Reynaldo Hahn, or even of Fauré in his early songs---Aprés un Rêve, which I do love, being just the most obvious example.  The great thing, of course, is that we don't need to choose between the two, except as a matter of allocating limited listening time---we can have both.

With the best of Pearl Fishers, though, Bizet makes it clear that Carmen was no fluke, but just the first mature fruit of a genius that was already perfectly evident, indeed in places perfectly realized, in the earlier work.  The tenor-baritone duet Au fond du temple saint, and the tenor romance Je crois entendre encore, both from Act I, are generally considered the greatest moments of Pearl Fishers.  Au fond is indeed wonderful, but after repeated listening to many versions of both (as they both do make my mouth water), I think Je crois is the greater of the two.   Salonistic, sentimental, whatever, it is the kind of aria that most composers can only dream of writing, nearly divine in its perfection and beauty.

The two singers I like best in this are Alain Vanzo and Nicolai Gedda.  I've linked some Youtubes of Vanzo singing this earlier, but I'll link another below.  Vanzo, in the second video below, uses the voix mixte to great effect, with a certain airiness in his timbre where Gedda's, in the first video, is smoother, probably a bit louder and more standardly operatic, with great clarity and perhaps slightly more control (they both have good control, though, and shape the line beautifully).  The last video, however, is of a 1953 recital performance by Gedda, whose timbre here is much closer to Vanzo's, and perhaps a bit more expressive too.  As is common in recital (for those uncommon singers who can do it), Gedda takes the final line that in the operatic arrangement is allotted to the English horn (over the singer's held note), going up to a piano high C.  (Vanzo can do this beautifully too, as he does in the video linked in an earlier post.)

Gedda, 1960:

Vanzo:

Gedda, 1953 recital: