Met’s New “Carmen” Triumphs
George Loomis - Musical America
4 janvier 2010

NEW YORK—The Metropolitan Opera's fourth new production of the season has several things in common with the first. Like Luc Bondy's “Tosca,” Richard Eyre's “Carmen,” unveiled on New Year's Eve, replaces a production by Franco Zeffirelli. And both of the new stagings are essentially conventional productions in which the action, while generally set in the locales specified, is updated to Fascist 1930s.

This time, however, the succession from Zeffirelli went far more smoothly. The Italian director's 1996 “Carmen” never won the kind of following his 25-year-old “Tosca” did, so few were reluctant to see it go. More importantly, Eyre, in his Met debut, did not impose his vision on the work with such controversial moves as abandoning Tosca's candelabra ritual, which sent the opening-night “Tosca” audience into a tizzy. When Eyre and the rest of the production team took their bows, they drew not vociferous booing but tepid applause interspersed with one or two random boos.

They deserved much better. The Met gave Eyre—who directed Tom Stoppard's play “The Invention of Love” in New York but who is a neophyte to opera, with only two other stagings to his credit—an outstanding cast to work with. And he makes the most of it, as he charts insightfully the double tragedy embracing the demise of the Gypsy temptress and the unraveling of her eventual murderer, the corporal Don José who succumbs to her almost mythical sexuality. One of many telling moments comes when José, grippingly portrayed by Roberto Alagna, is stripped of middle-class respectability and absorbed into the band of smugglers who are Carmen's cronies. He reacts passively, looking stunned as his soldier's coat is replaced by a rough jacket and his arm is slashed so he can join a smuggler in an impromptu blood-brotherhood pact.

His change of careers is a futile gesture, of course, because Carmen has passed him over, a point Eyre reinforces when, shortly after the curtain rises on Act 3, she brushes him off. Nevertheless, José, set in relief by Peter Mumford's lighting, watches yearningly as Carmen and her girlfriends deal cards in search of clues to their futures; he finally makes cogent eye contact with Carmen when the cards predict her death.

If José's obsession leads to his inexorable descent into criminality and violence, Carmen remains first and foremost a femme fatale defined by sexuality, a quality that Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year Elina Garanca projects vividly with her staggeringly good looks. I have never been able to buy the idea that Carmen is a great tragic figure; even the bravery with which she approaches her final encounter with José looks dangerously close to foolhardiness. With Carmen it is the lust that counts, and here it is present in abundance, notwithstanding some curious touches Eyre adds to the Habanera, like having her eat an orange or do some laundry, assisted by pail and washboard.

Eyre sets the opera during the Spanish Civil War—not the first time New York has seen such a “Carmen” (cf. Frank Corsaro's 1984 production for the New York City Opera)—but the premise really doesn't count for a lot, and in the absence of a program note, some might not have even caught it. When the curtain goes up, we see a Cyclone-type wire fence, which separates the soldiers from the populace and looks more American than Spanish.
Still, the stage picture by designer Rob Howell (another Met debutant) goes handily with what the opera is about. As with Richard Peduzzi's sets for “Tosca,” brick walls are fundamental to the design, but they are effectively varied, with arches having prominence in Acts 1 and 2 and (after a single intermission) a more massive structure doubling as mountains and bullring for Acts 3 and 4.

The turntable is actively used, most strikingly at the end when, after Carmen is stabbed, the set spins around to reveal the interior of the bullring with a slain bull at center. Just when the Toreador performed the feat his audience came to see, his current flame, it seems, is done in. A clever touch. Of course, one doubts that Carmen's relationship with the Toreador would have had real staying power, but at least he got a (short) love duet out of her, which is more than can be said for poor José. In another novel addition, each of Acts 1 and 3 begins engagingly with an interpolated pas de deux from dancers Maria Kowroski and Martin Harvey (in their Met debuts).

Garanca scored a major success as Carmen. In addition to her physical attributes alluded to above, she has a mezzo voice that is lovely to hear and endowed with a refreshing lightness that keeps the music buoyant. But she never sounds undernourished vocally. She is also a fine musician even if she could take pointers on matters of French style and diction from her José. One doesn't ordinarily associate consummate artistry with a singer of Alagna's charisma and swagger, but it is high time that he is recognized as the fine stylist he is. The voice sounded in good shape too, even if it cracked at the end of the “Flower Song.”

In my experience the best Escamillos are those who bring Gallic flair to the role; otherwise, even the finest singers face an unrewarding task, starting off with the ungratefully written “Toreador Song.” Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien, an outstanding Don Giovanni in the Bayerische Staatsoper's new production two months ago, sang Escamillo perfectly well without making the kind of impression he could in any number of other roles. Likewise, Micaëla is not the best vehicle for soprano Barbara Frittoli's considerable talents, but she sang it exquisitely and with lovely vocal colors.

Bizet lays on the Spanish local color in “Carmen” with a determination that foreshadows Puccini's Orientalisms in “Turandot.” But to his credit the rising Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in his Met debut, kept the score sounding quite French, insofar as that is possible, especially since the Guiraud recitatives are used in lieu of spoken dialogue. Nézet-Séguin began with a prelude that was almost disturbingly fast, yet it served as an apt point of departure for a vivacious reading that helped keep the proceedings lively.

George Loomis