Metropolitan Opera – Bizet’s Carmen. October 18, 2014.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, Balcony (Seat C111, $104.50).

Story.  See previous post.

Conductor – Pablo Heras-Casado.  Micaela – Hei-Kyung Hong, Don Jose – Aleksandrs Antonenko, Carmen – Anita Rachvelishvili, Escamillo – Massimo Cavalletti.

This is the first opera of the season for us, so I set out with some level of anticipation and excitement.  While Carmen is a very familiar story, and I know many of the tunes quite well, I was quite sure I was going to enjoy it.  A couple of unknowns loomed in the background: a new set (introduced in 2009,) and that the performers were relatively unknowns to the Met.  The one exception is Hong, whom I saw tonight for the first time.  She was a frequent artist at the Met many years ago, but her appearances seem a lot more sporadic nowadays.

Enjoyed the opera I did, but not without some misgivings.

Let us first get the new set out of the way.  In two words: it worked.  The curtain at the beginning was a red lightning bolt on a black background.  That “theme” is echoed as the opening of a cave, and in the dress worn by Carmen at her death.  By rotating the two parts of the set, the scenery changed from outside to inside, a design that is simple yet clever.  While not really part of the set, two dancers did their bit during the overture (to Act 1) and interlude (to Act 3).  The dancers Maria Kowroski and Martin Harvey added a visual element to the music, but not much else in my opinion.  The one element that was missing: live horses.  Instead of singing the Toreador song astride a horse (or with one nearby,) Escamillo did that next to a chair.  To compensate for that, a dead bull came into view at the end of the opera as the set rotated to expose the interior of the arena.

The principal protagonist of the opera is, of course, Carmen.  When well-performed, Carmen elicits a range of emotions ranging from sympathy to pity from the audience.  (I tried to use the word “disgust” as she is also the villain, but couldn’t bring myself to do that.)  Knowing how the story unfolds made it easier to ride along emotionally, but the way Rachvelishvili approached her role made the experience a lot more about enjoying her singing - which she did superbly – and less about the complex character that is Carmen.  In the song and dance she did for Don Jose, the sound of the castanets was provided by the orchestra.  Her voice was strong, and there were occasions that I thought a whisper would do nicely.  There were also a couple of places where she couldn’t quite reach the high notes.

A similar description can be applied to the other singers.  They all have strong voices, but failed to deliver the drama expected of their roles.

Perhaps in the interest of time, there was only one intermission, after Act 2.  One has to admire how the singers, especially Rachvelishvili, managed the entire opera with only one break.  As far as I could tell, they held nothing back.  (Again, I wish they would during some of the more tender moments.)

Even though I claim familiarity with the opera, I continue to pick up new insight about the work.  For one, I didn’t realize (or had forgotten) that Bizet died while the opera was going through its first run, and thus didn’t know how very popular the opera would become.  (We saw the Met’s 990^th performance, which is a lot of performances.)  Another aspect that I hadn’t noticed before was the music got much darker during the second half.  That’s when the unraveling of the relationship between Carmen and Don Jose eventually led to the murder.  The version used for this performance was by Fritz Oeser; the main characteristic was little spoken dialogue, I noticed only a couple of sentences.

We have seen Heras-Casado a couple of times before: once with New York Phil, the other time with Mostly Mozart.  He was fine with the overtures, and the orchestra in general sounded good.  It was thus a bit puzzling that the whole experience was a bit on the chaotic side.  Things were more out of control than even the storyline would suggest.

I said at the outset that I enjoyed the opera.  What I do not know is why I enjoyed it.  Perhaps the great music, the powerful story, and the individual performers combine to overcome the flaws in the overall execution.

The New York Times review is generally negative, contrasting this run with the 2009 performances led by Nezet-Seguin.  The reviewer thought the performance of Rachvelishvili was more interesting than the entire opera.  Or is that what he means by “Her Carmen is more interesting than this ‘Carmen’?”  Interestingly, there is a New York Times review in 2012 that was also critical, although about different aspects.  The reviewer in this case agrees with me: the dancing is superfluous, and Rachvelishvili shaded flat a couple of times.

Traffic was quite bad getting into town, and I had trouble finding parking.  Together with the need to change some tickets (again,) my dinner was take-out quiche from Europan.  We did stop by Burger King along the Turnpike on the way home.