A compelling new Carmen
Steve Cohen - The World of Opera – The Opera Critic
January 18, 2010

The Metropolitan Opera's new Carmen has three outstanding elements - its Carmen, its Don José and the conductor - and their relative importance may well be in reverse order.

Let's start with Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the pit. The 34-year-old French-Canadian makes a strong company debut and he does so in a counterintuitive way. His is not in the dominating, forceful manner that calls attention to the conductor's interpretation. He is not imposing like a Toscanini, Karajan or Muti. Instead, Nézet-Séguin shapes his concept around the vocal subtleties of each duet and ensemble as he encourages each singer to express his or her feelings. The result is an intimate, personal expression of emotions from the characters.

The preludes and entr'actes were gems, with Nézet-Séguin encouraging sensitive solos from the first-chair bassoon, oboe, flute and piccolo. He gave the same delicate attention to the instrumental accompaniment of the vocal sections. An experienced conductor of symphonic music, Nézet-Séguin obviously knows that opera is a different form and it is built around the human voice.

This conductor breathes and flexes with the words, but he never sounds indulgent and most of his tempi are brisk. Act 2 is an excellent example of how he keeps a firm line as he and the singers build inexorably to the denouement.

Roberto Alagna benefits from Nézet-Séguin's approach. On January 12, in the opera's fourth performance this season, Alagna sang more beautifully than I've ever heard him. I normally respect his musicianship and passion, and here he is sounding more refined and lyrical than ever. He capped an ascending scale to a lovely pianissimo B-flat just before the end of his Flower Song, and the concluding note of the aria also was soft and tender.

Throughout the opera, Alagna presented an introverted José who could not resist the lure of the forthright Carmen. There were explosions of passion and physicality which drew gasps from the audience, but mostly this José was repressed. One critic wrote that Alagna and Elina Garanca lacked excitement in the final confrontation outside the bull ring, but I rather liked their fatalistic approach.

Garanca makes an attractive dark-haired Carmen, and her voice is sensuous. It has a brightness almost like Angela Gheorghiu's (who sang opposite Alagna on an EMI recording) rather than a chesty mezzo sound. In fact, Garanca's voice loses volume and thrust in lower passages. She is best at the top of her range, and she included two interpolated high notes that are normally added only by sopranos.

Garanca gave a beautifully detailed impersonation of the gutsy, defiant Carmen. She dispenses with hip-swaying and castanet-clicking but her impersonation lacks tragic depth. Her characterization walks a fuzzy line between a happy-go-lucky rejection of societal norms and resignation to fate. Is she a defiant mistress of her own destiny? Or does she feel powerless against the forces of a police state (in this production, Franco's pro-Nazi Spain on the eve of World War Two)? I hope that future seasons will bring more development and clarity.

For any reader who regrets the change from the original casting of this production, try to imagine how problematic it would have been to see Roberto Alagna confront his soon-to-be ex-wife, Angela Gheorghiu, with a knife as he sings "I'll never let you go. Damn you!"

The other major singers in this production are Barbara Frittoli, who makes a lovely Micaela and sings nicely without ever convincing us that she's a plain woman from José's home town in Andalusia; and Mariusz Kwiecien who doesn't quite have the physical stature of a matinee-idol toreador nor the brassy vocal sound of such a character. Keith Miller is impressive as Zuniga.

Richard Eyre's production, with sets and costumes by Rob Howell, gives us vivid moments and also confusing scenes. The tavern of Act 2 is welcoming and the mountain pass of Act 3 is dramatic, while the outside of the bull ring in Act 4 is unexceptional. But the main square of Act 1 is a mess. Instead of showing groups of locals - children, men and factory workers - moving across an open area like the real plaza in Seville, all of these people are crowded behind a chain-link fence. The foreground is filled with the soldiers. The only positive thing I can see about this arrangement is that it forces the chorus singing to be downstage, projecting strongly to the audience. And the work of the choruses is one of the production's greatest joys.

One of Eyre's innovations is a pair of flamenco dancers illustrating the passion of Carmen and José during two of the preludes. Their presence fills the visual darkness during those preludes and it neither helps nor hurts the storytelling, while their dancing is superb. Another is the use of a turntable to show the inside of the bullring, immediately after José's confession that he killed Carmen. In the opera's final seconds we see Escamillo poised over a bull that he has slain. This seems justifiable when you consider how frequently Bizet's music calls attention to the bullfight during the final duet of Carmen and José, but to some viewers it may seem jarring.

Clergymen appear on stage during the Act 4 procession, but the Catholic presence in 1930s Spain should be shown even more strongly. It was political intervention by the Church that brought down the Spanish Republic in 1936. A display of this power would accentuate the fact that Carmen's free spirit could not prevail in a nation with such fear of divine will.

The updating from the 1830s to the 1930s is apt. It does no harm to the story, and it shows a period when repression was even more overt than in the earlier time and the real counterparts of Carmen and her gypsy friends were imprisoned or executed.

Eyre hints at racism but he does not illustrate it forcefully enough. The hometown of Don José and Micaela contained more Muslim culture than other regions of Spain. So how about showing us a dark-skinned tenor and soprano in those roles? Eyre has Franco's soldiers harass and fondle Micaela when she comes in search of José, and this action would be even more startling if they were white and she were dark.

Photo: © Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera