This summer's Santa Fe Opera performance was the first time I've really listened to Bizet's first opera, Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers).  It was a good performance, and perhaps I'll review it more fully sometime; the male leads, singing Nadir and Zurga, were good but not extraordinary, the female lead, Nicole Cabell singing Leila, had a more distinctive and powerful voice, with some clear ringing tone but also at times a bit too much vibrato and/or distortion, and possibly an overall sound more suited, to my ears, for bel canto Italian opera than a more legato french style.  The opera has some beautiful choral sections, and in the Santa Fe performance I especially liked some of the duet work between Nadir and Leila in the middle and later sections.  I also enjoyed the act I interaction between Nadir and Zurga, but I didn't quite realize, from the Santa Fe performance, that this is probably the high point of the opera and probably, in terms of just beautiful melody and singing, one of the high points of opera.

Listening to the first act, on Angel LPs (Angel 3603, stereo) with Pierre Dervaux conducting the chorus and orchestra of the Opéra Comique (Paris) and Janine Micheau as love-interest and priestess Leila, Nicolai Gedda as Nadir, Ernest Blanc as Zurga (rivals for Leila's love) and Jacques Mars as the bad-guy priest Nourabad, was a thoroughly satisfying musical experience.  Some of the music might be thought a bit simple in its appeal, but none of it is boring, and there are plenty of superb high points.  Gedda, who was a go-to tenor for recordings for several decades in the middle of the last century because of his reliability, willingness to deal with studio requirements such as multiple takes and such, and ability to project a role even in the studio, does an excellent job, with a relatively clear and neutral vocal quality.  Baritone Ernest Blanc is a wonderful foil for Gedda, especially in the outstanding duet "Au fond du temple saint", with a very characterful voice that has a mellow, almost walnut-brown tone.  The voices contrast nicely, but also work beautifully together in the unison passages. The Angel LP sound is good except toward the end of a side, where there is either a lot of inner-groove distortion, or perhaps my copy is just worn.  I'm looking forward to a careful listen to the rest of this performance. Here's the Nadir-Zurga duet "Au fond du Temple Saint" from this recording:

However, what really turned me on to quality of the first-act music for Nadir and Zurga was the performances of French tenor Alain Vanzo.  He has an amazing, very clear voice, sounding higher than most tenors when singing the same notes, but not quite like a countertenor.  No one can touch him in this role.  So here is a selection of his performances of the two great highlights of the first act: the duet "Au fond du temple saint", and Nadir's solo aria "Je crois entendre encore".  This is some of the most beautiful singing ever.

 Au Fond du Temple Saint:

Live in Amsterdam, 1963, with Belgian baritone Juri Jorlis as Zurga. Probably my favorite. Joris also has an exceptionally clear-toned voice that goes well with Vanzo's, and sings well; it's not just Vanzo's solo work that is outstanding here, Joris is too, and the two together are stunning, for instance beginning at 1'30 in the video.

The above performance is available on a 2 CD set on the Verona label. Jean Fornet conducts the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw, Erna Spoorenberg is Leila.

It's also interesting to hear a younger Vanzo, in 1959 with Robert Massard as Zurga. His voice sounds slightly tauter, the overall tone a bit more brilliantly operatic but perhaps less supple, and the tempo may be a bit faster.

Also from 1959, a very different performance with Gabriel Bacquier as Zurga. A much slower tempo, a softer-edged tone from Vanzo, a more relaxed interpretation overall. At least as presented on Youtube, the sound quality is better than in the two preceding clips, but I think there is a genuine difference in Vanzo's tone here, probably influenced by the slow tempo. Bacquier is a more standard, dark-toned baritone, and his delivery is more emphatically "operatic" at times. Still very much worth hearing. This clip also contains a lot of excellent music leading up to the aria; a highlight is the melodic passage for Nadir as he starts to be carried away by memories of Leila ("Son regard...") from 1'20 through 1'40. The musical and melodic quality here is as high as in any great aria. The passage begins with an old (but perhaps not so old in Bizet's time) trick, the singer singing the words of the phrase while repeating the same musical note, with the harmony changing underneath. (Puccini's "E lucevan le stelle" for Cavaradossi in Tosca starts the same way.) Here we just get one harmonic change with the same note kept in the melody; at the next harmonic change the singer rises by a minor third, and we are into an unmistakably nineteenth-century French melody, probably in some minor mode, reminiscent of antique times and exotic lands seen through a golden haze of memory. (You know the vein; it runs through art (Delacroix) and literature (Baudelaire), and certainly through French music all the way up to Debussy and Ravel, Reynaldo Hahn, etc...) This is magic, Bizet's genius at work; the transitions into and out of it are also superbly handled...in fact, the whole passage in this clip, before what is considered the duet proper begins with "Au fond..." at 2'20, shows Bizet's genius in handling dialogue in music, seamlessly mixing declamatory, recitative-like parts with melodic passages. At 1'50, Zurga is drawn into the reverie...the foreboding in his chromatic descending line (echoed at times in his lines in the duet proper, and presaged in some way by some chromatic ascending lines earlier) is not exactly the most subtle or original thing, but works perfectly as part of Bizet's mix.

Je crois entendre encore

This solo aria "Je crois entendre encore" is another contender for the musical high point of the opera. I'm unsure of the source of this clip, but it's a good one.

I'm also not sure where and when this next clip is from. In the preceding version, and in most or all of the other performances I've heard, the aria ends with Nadir's final "Charmant souvenir" echoed by the oboe. Where the singer rises a fourth (to the A above middle C) on "Charmant", the oboe rises a minor sixth, and also rises at the end to the cadence. In this version Vanzo sings the oboe's line, the minor sixth on "Charmant" taking him (incidentally) to what is called a "high C" for tenor, and it is breathaking:

The oboe line is probably what Bizet wrote, and perhaps sets up the transition to what follows better than singing the cadence, but it's also possible that it was set for the oboe because it was too high for the tenor in the relevant performance. Possibly the above clip is from a concert performance of the aria, where there is no need for a transition; the sung cadence is certainly effective.

Finally, from the 1963 Amsterdam performance again: