Bizet’s Carmen
Met Opera
October 28, 2014
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
Tonight revisiting Carmen, I was reminded why it’s such a
blockbuster. With nine hundred and ninety two performances at the Met alone,
Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera is immensely and effortlessly entertaining. It
features wonderful music at every turn with a variety of different themes and
Spanish-tinged melodies that are always fiery and pleasant to the ear. In terms
of the plot, which is linear and very easy to follow, this is not an opera of
nuance – dutiful, good-boy soldier falls for beautiful, free-spirited gypsy,
who (maybe) loves him back (for a bit), drags him into an adventurous life of
danger as an outlaw smuggler; soldier is not really made for this, but is crazy
about his gypsy, while torn by remorse for not being close to his loving mother
and not behaving like a good citizen; enter hot, free-spirited torero
who whisks the beautiful gypsy away; soldier goes crazy with jealousy and stabs
gypsy to death.
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| Photo credit: Met |
Although the story may be simple, the music is complex and
multi-faceted and brings different themes alive with immediacy, power and
expressiveness. Often times Bizet’s score switches the musical mood several
times within a single scene to emphasize the various strands that are all going
on at once so that in the span of only a few minutes the tone will change from
celebratory to dangerous to loving, and then back to festive, really
illustrating how the unity of the plot consists of a multiplicity of ideas that
all work together beautifully.
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| Photo credit: Met |
Young, passionate and energetic, Pablo Heras-Casado is the
perfect conductor for Carmen, not the least because of his obvious Spanish
sensibility, particularly evident in the opening of Act IV, which musically was
one of the highlights of the evening. It is a fiery and breathtaking piece of
music that conjures an intensely passionate mood in preparation for the
emotional climax to come in the finale. Heras-Casado kept the whole opera
moving at a brisk pace, distilling every nuance of the wonderful Bizet score.
He really brought it to life for me like never before and made me realize that
the music may actually be the true, and certainly the most complex, protagonist
here.
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| Photo credit: Hioryuki Ito / NYT |
Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili is a force of nature, a
veritable stage animal. Her acting was fierce, aggressive and sensual, as a
Carmen should be and maybe even more – the intensity of her passion when initiating
intercourse with Don Jose on a table caused a lot of tableware to fall to the
ground (which was a realistic yet distracting effect). The rawness of her
acting contrasted somehow with her singing, which was surprisingly graceful,
and fluid throughout, almost nonchalant, a bit lacking in the guttural,
expressive intensity that one would expect from a Carmen. She did achieve peaks
of tragic passion in Act IV’s final confrontation with Don Jose, actually
sending some shivers down my spine. Rachvelishvili was incredibly mobile on
stage and also a great dancer, particularly in Acts II and III, where really
embodied the gypsy nature of her character. This singer’s very physical stage
presence was evident when we discovered her in Price Igor last year, but she was
even more striking in this Bizet role that seems to have become her signature
part since her La Scala debut in 2009.
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
Soprano Anita Hartig was an impressive Micaela, the loving
good girl tending to Don Jose’s sick mother. Her character is Gilda-like and Hartig
conveyed it with an angelic purity and innocence while at the same time soaring
and effortlessly filling the space more than any of her other colleagues on
stage. She left me wanting to hear more from her and I will look forward to
seeing her again in a leading role in the future. Bass Ildar Abdrazakov
exuded charisma as Escamillo. His entrance in Act II was a showstopper and a
pleasure for the eyes and the ears alike. No wonder Carmen dumps that moping
Don Jose for this sexy toreador, really a no brainer, especially when
Abdrazakov is singing the role! Tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko as Don
Jose was passable once he warmed up a bit and as long as he avoided high notes.
I am just not crazy about the sound of his voice, particularly in the higher
register. Though his sound can be grating on the ears, when he is in the young,
naive and in love stage of his early character development, he was easier to
palate, especially in the last two acts of the opera when he grows more jaded
and angry at the world.
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
Frasquita and Mercedes may be minor roles but Kiri Deonarine
and Jennifer Johnson Cano did an excellent job in bringing these two
gypsies to life with verve and lightheartedness, while at the same time being
vocally very strong and displaying great acting skills, they both left me
wishing to see more from their characters. The Met’s chorus was as usual
excellent, with a special mention for the kids’ section that was particularly
delightful and fresh.
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| Photo credit: Beatriz Schiller |
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
Rob Howell’s sets were essential and raw, with a circular crumbly stone-like
structure serving as backbone for most of the opera, complemented by gates
surrounding the square (Act I), Pastia’s bar and dance floor (Act II),
mountainous elements (Act III) and the street outside the plaza de toros (Act IV). The simple decadence of the sets made them
somehow a-temporal in a very refreshing way. It seems like one of director Richard
Eyre’s signature moves is to imbue his overtures with a little does of
stage action (think of this year’s Nozze). Here he chose to have each
act’s overture/prelude punctuated by a couple of dancers performing the
different stages of Carmen and Don Jose’s love story, which was a nice touch,
particularly with red lighting that emphasized the violence and passion flowing
through the opera. The direction was all in all pretty straightforward, with
some particularly effective ideas in Act IV. The parallel between Carmen as a
force of nature who needs taming and the bull whom matador arrives in the
parade to strike down is really pounded into the audience full force in this
production:
C’est l’Espada, la fine lame,
celui qui vient terminer tout,
qui paraît à la fin du drame
et qui frappe le dernier coup!
celui qui vient terminer tout,
qui paraît à la fin du drame
et qui frappe le dernier coup!
As Escamillo enters in full regalia on his way to the bullring,
the chorus sings a metatextual reflection of what happens in the final seconds
of the drama. And the last image Eyre leaves us with is a split-frame glimpse
of the corpse of Carmen on one side of the stage and her virtual mirror image
in the cadaver of the bull that is revealed once the circular stage spins open
and the bullring after the bullfight is brought into view. Like the sacrificial
bull, Carmen has been laid low, her carefree toying with men’s emotions has
back to haunt her. And the story spins full circle.
- Lei & Lui
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
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| Photo credit: Met |
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / Met |
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| Photo credit: Met |
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