Bizet : Carmen
Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Pablo Heras-Casado
I know that the Metropolitan has a reputation as a bastion of tradition, nevertheless, I was a bit shocked to realise that the company was using the Guiraud recitatives, instead of the original spoken dialogue, for their current production of Carmen. I doubt there's a major house anywhere in Europe that would still do so these days. Nor, it seemed, did the company have the courage of its convictions, because spoken dialogue suddenly appeared in Act 3 in a couple of places. Of course, at that point it becomes obvious why sung recitative might be considered preferable to speech, given a cast in which there was not one native French speaker, so it was probably ultimately a better option to have slightly indistinct sung French than utterly mangled spoken French.
That moment of incredulity passed, we settled down to a reasonably straightforward production. Richard Eyre chose to set it (judging from the costumes) in the late 1930s, but there's little other indication of the turmoil in Spain of that era, and it seems irrelevant to the body of the story. The sets made good use of the Met's turntable stage, with semi-circular sets of crumbling stonework that rotated as required to form indoors and outdoors spaces. The costumes were fairly discreet, maybe a little too much so for Escamillo in his final scene - I've seen some real trajes de luces close up, and this one wasn't nearly dazzling enough - but there was a binding image of a rift that was cleverly worked through both decors and costume from start to finish, mainly represented by the jagged red rift slashing down across the black drop that opens and closes the acts. This image recurred again and again, in lighting effects, in disposition of scenery, and ultimately in Carmen's Act 4 dress, a constant reminder of how fractured virtually all the relationships portrayed are. It was also the only really individual touch about this production, which otherwise offered nothing especially new or original.
Musically, too, the evening was reliable, but somewhat stolid. There was plenty of full-blooded playing and singing, but it was all mostly on a picture-postcard level. I was privileged enough to see Piero Faggione's legendary production for the 1977 Edinburgh Festival and, perhaps unfairly, every other performance of Carmen has had to match up to that ever since. Most, if not all, have failed, and Eyre's has not even attempted to touch on the psychological depths that can be examined in this work. It's a nice, glossy, tourist's version of Carmen, and was accordingly given a nice, glossy performance by all the artists.
Anita Rachvelishvili smouldered physically and vocally, a comfortable femme fatale with little sense of introspection. Alexanders Antonenko was a robust Don José, vocally at ease in the role, for the most part, although he rather spoiled the end of the Flower Song by having to breathe in the middle of his final cadence. However, he proposed no insights in to the character, nor did he spark off Rachvelishvili very effectively. Ildar Abdrazakov played Escamillo (and looked) with all the superficial glamour of a 30s matinee idol, but offering a splendid, brazen assurance to his part. Only Anita Hartig produced something out of the ordinary, beyond a lovely, smooth soprano. In Act 3, when she makes her last plea, "Une parole encore" rang out with a note of pure steel that halted everyone in their tracks; at that moment, Micaëla was not going to be gainsaid and Hartig truly made her presence felt.
It's fortunate that I know the libretto almost by heart; even the Met chorus, often a truly excellent force in any production, was less than crystal clear, while the soloists, though not intolerable, all had heavy accents. The orchestra, however, was in fine form, with Heras-Casado conducting with passion, and mostly first-rate results. The interlude before Act 3 was rather sentimentalised by Christopher Wheeldon's pas de deux - a nice enough number after a fashion, but impossibly sugary in this context - but that of Act 4 was an explosion of light and colour from which we were thankfully not distracted by unnecessary busy-work on stage. A pity that intensity could not carry through into the final duet between Carmen and José.
[Next : 4th November]
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