Bizet’s opera was telecast today in HD. This was the 993rd performance of the work by the Met. This is the same production that was offered in HD by the Met in January 2010 with Elina Garanča in the title role, so I’ll just focus on the new performers. That run was led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin who look like a pixie, but who conducted  like a lion. Today’s leader was Pablo Heras-Casado who looked like a Spanish leprechaun and who conducted like one, complete with an imaginary baton. The Met Orchestra could play Carmen under stage 4 anesthesia and do it well. They played well.

The effect that this performance had on its audience likely depends on how many Carmens they had experienced. Carmen is such a great opera that when it’s still relatively new to you it succeeds even with and indifferent presentation. The greater your history with it, the more demanding of its performers you will be. Carmen’s appeal goes beyond the great music and compelling story. The protagonist is free in almost every sense of that momentous word. She may be afraid of death, but she is not awed by it. She must die young. A middle aged Carmen is unthinkable. It’s easy to understand what she sees in the young lidiador Escamillo, but her attraction to Don Jose is a mistake from the start. She falls out of love with him minutes after he enters Lillas Pastia’s tavern when he considers leaving her to return to his barracks. His only use to her after that is as the instrument that compels her life to be short as it must be.

The Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili was Carmen. She has everything needed for a successful Carmen other than the right body habitus. Her voice is sensuous, she moves with easy grace, and she projects an image of tough sensuality. The weakest part of her impersonation was the Habenera which the mezzo admitted was the only number in the score that she found problematic. Richard Eyre’s direction had her and Don Jose rolling around the floor a lot which subtracted rather than added to aura of sex that pervades Bizet’s opera. Rachvelishvili is only 30 years old. There’s time for her interpretation to broaden as long as her physique doesn’t do likewise.

Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko has an heroic voice that’s right for Otello and Calaf, but which lacks the flexibility and nuance need for Don Jose in the opera’s first two acts. He made a mess of the Flower Song breaking the aria’s final word into two awkward halves. The dramatic outbursts of the last two acts were much more suited to his blast it out style. Richard Tucker, who sang the part 60 times with the company, represents the ideal combination of lyric and dramatic singing needed to fully realize Don Jose.

Aleksandrs Antonenko and Anita Hartig

Anita Hartig and Aleksandrs Antonenko

Escamillo is always a problem to cast. Famous as it’s big aria is, it’s rarely in the comfort zone of whoever gets to sing it, be a baritone or bass-baritone. Ildar Abdrazakov  is a bass baritone. Surprisingly, he had more difficulty with the aria’s low notes than the rest of the piece. At no time did he seem comfortable with the Toreador Song. Of course, a bull fighter is a matador not a toreador, but Bizet needed four syllables not three and likely didn’t know much about la corrida de toros. In the last act Abdrazakov was in a realistic traje de luces, but the costume designer left out the torero’s coleta . The opera was set in the late 1930s so the coleta would have been a pin-on rather than a real strand of hair.

Micaela is probably the most thankless leading soprano role in any standard repertory opera. She has a beautiful duet and a lovely aria, but she slows the action and one wishes her gone as soon as possible. Today the part was sung by the Romanian soprano Anita Hartig. She has a fine lyric soprano and delivered her music with a beautiful tone and with fine vocal control. But still she’s a yokel out of depth in the emotional cauldron that is the gypsy’s world.

In summary, another first rate professional performance of Bizet’s classic by the world’s greatest opera company, but one that’s in the middle of the other 992 by the Met. A final note, Matthew Diamond’s video direction was invisible which means it was very good.

 

 

Metropolitan Opera House
November 1, 2014
CARMEN
Georges Bizet-Henri Meilhac/Ludovic Halévy/Prosper Mérimée

Carmen………………….Anita Rachvelishvili
Don José………………..Aleksandrs Antonenko
Micaela…………………Anita Hartig
Escamillo……………….Ildar Abdrazakov
Frasquita……………….Kiri Deonarine
Mercédès………………..Jennifer Johnson Cano
Remendado……………….Eduardo Valdes
Dancaïre………………..Malcolm MacKenzie
Zuniga………………….Keith Miller
Moralès…………………John Moore
Dancer………………….Maria Kowroski
Dancer………………….Martin Harvey

Conductor……………….Pablo Heras-Casado

Production………………Richard Eyre
Designer………………..Rob Howell
Associate Costume Designer..Irene Bohan
Lighting designer………..Peter Mumford
Choreographer……………Christopher Wheeldon
TV Director……………..Matthew Diamond