'Carmen' evades its Met curse
David Patrick Stearns - Philadelphia Inquirer
6 janvier 2010

NEW YORK - Carmen has led a cursed existence at the Metropolitan Opera - with the opera itself doing much of the cursing. Failure in the title role sent the great Rosa Ponselle into retirement and Waltraud Meier back to Wagner. The last two productions exposed creative decline among the respective directors, Peter Hall and Franco Zeffirelli.

Yet potential victims in the newest production - mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca, director Richard Eyre, and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin - emerged so unscathed at the New Year's Eve opening as to temporarily quell suspicions that the Met really is out to destroy every standard-repertoire opera in its path.

Often, star power saves questionable productions in the HD simulcasts; in the case of Carmen - whose simulcast is scheduled for 1 p.m. Jan. 16 at six area theaters - the production has a strong macro view of Bizet's fallible masterpiece that overrides disappointments in the star department.

Fallible? An opera with great tunes and a still-gripping plot about romantic obsession and murder? Sure. Conceived for a theater much smaller than most modern opera houses and without pace-slowing recitatives, Carmen can sprawl itself to death. Often, success is dependent on the most mundane elements: The opera's four acts can mean three intermissions; this production has one. The new production's revolving set - with crumbling circular walls that could be a fortress or a bullring - creates visual dynamism when the music goes on a bit long. Characters have unusually well-motivated entrances and exits. Nézet-Séguin's speedy tempos rescue the opera from spirit-killing poshness.

That might seem hard to believe in light of this conductor's contemplative Brahms last month with the Philadelphia Orchestra. But Nézet-Séguin (still a contender for the orchestra's music directorship) isn't guided by a central aesthetic; his work here reflects shrewd evaluation of the opera's needs.

Director Eyre was of the same mind. Rather than prodding the opera for new insights, the production makes the best possible sense of the archetypal characters - and if Eyre could accomplish that in Broadway's Mary Poppins, he can do it for anybody. The story is updated a century, to 1930s Spain during the Spanish Civil War; Eyre's program note claims that the femme fatale Carmen and her corruption of hapless military man Don Jose better suit that era's social dynamics.

The main advantage, though, is creating a familiar visual vocabulary that frees viewers to concentrate on music and characterization. For the singers, the stage was free of any contrivance, cleared in ways that let them make the most of what they have to offer.

The innocent Micaela is often treated as an entry-level role for young sopranos; veteran Barbara Frittoli, in contrast, has audible vocal mileage but justifies it with a characterization that implies she is, in her own quiet way, a match for the overly fierce Carmen. Latvian mezzo-soprano Garanca brings such physical believability to the title role that you can almost ignore the fact that her lower range only suggests Carmen's heart of darkness. Check back in 10 years.

Tenor Roberto Alagna (Don Jose) sang and acted with ease and authority until cracking on the high notes of "The Flower Song" - though he has perhaps learned from Andrea Bocelli that vocal inadequacies can be disguised as expressions of deep emotion.

Nothing is wrong with Mariusz Kwiecien's portrayal of Escamillo the bullfighter, but you left the opera thinking how little dimension the role has. Shouldn't singers disguise such things?