The winter season also brought significant cast changes for the Lyric company's revivals of Carmen and Die Zauberflote. The young Hungarian mezzo Viktoria Vizin's company debut marked her first assumption of Carmen in a major inter­national theatre (March 9). The singer used her statuesque beauty to advantage, making the amoral heroine more femme than fatale while luxuriating in her sexual power over the hapless Don Jose. If in the first two acts Vizin engaged the audience mainly through the alluring lustre of her singing, Carmen's final confrontation with Jose outside the Seville bullring was the stuff of high wire drama. Vincenzo La Scola may not have looked or acted the most believable Jose ever, but he sang the role more beautifully and securely than Neil Shicoff earlier in the season: his Flower Song was a poised, impassioned model of stylish French singing. Patricia Racette, affecting in her aria, refused to play Micaela as the conventional goody-goody from the provinces. Back as Escamillo was the robust bass-baritone Mark S. Doss, a swaggering hunk of machismo in black leather. One could have nothing but praise for the fine work of the orchestra and chorus under Davis.