Sunday, January 10, 2010

Metropolitan Opera- Carmen

From the first note in this production of Bizet’s Carmen I could tell it was going to be an exiting evening. Yannick Nézet-Séguin opened the overture (for his Met debut) at a bracing pace, reminiscent of Dan Ettinger’s breakneck conducting this past October of Le Nozze di Figaro. Is there a current trend developing among up-and-coming conductors in which well-known overtures are taken at an uncontrollably fast tempo? Cool, I guess. Regardless of speed, Mr. Nézet-Séguin was vivaciously responsive to the singers throughout, giving them ample room for personal interpretation.

Richard Eyre directed this incredibly sensual production. While staying in a mostly traditional style (he only updated the opera one century- from the 1830s to the 1930s), he managed to inject such an intense level of visual passion and sensuality (reminiscent of the 2005 Salzburg Festival’s La Traviata), that the spine-tingling and horrific finale blew away every other Carmen I’ve seen. In the overture, following the march section when the music goes minor- injecting into the audience a sense horror and impending doom- Mr. Eyre and the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon inserted a sex-charged pas de duex. The bright red vertical crack in the curtain- seen since before the opera started, and also on Carmen’s last dress of the opera- opens up, revealing the two dancers surrounded by smoke and dark-red lights. The moment is captivating, an apache, and very sexy.

The basic set for the entire opera centers around two high rings of damaged brick wall that revolve to serve different functions and locations. Through the magic of lighting, the brick rings serve effectively as a cigarette factory, a tavern, a mountain hideaway, outside a bullring, and inside the bullring. Mr. Eyre must have had a firm understanding of the varying moods presented in the music in order to match his scenic choices perfectly. The tavern scene, that traditionally has colorful and proud flamenco dancing, was more tribal than usual, including clapping, stomping, street clothes, and dark/mysterious lighting. It was a little rough, circus-like, and even primitive for this usually very elegant scene, but was a nice contrast to the countless reproductions of the same superficially cheery dancing.

For me, the final scene when Don José murders Carmen is incredibly thrilling. The duality in the music alone is enough to move anyone without seeing a staged production. The lover’s theme is heard interspersed over the matador’s song, as if attempting to hack through while Don José stabs Carmen following her refusal of love. In this production, Carmen’s black dress shows that long red crack seen at the beginning, by now obviously representing blood. After the murder by knifing, when Don José is walking away from the dead Carmen, the set rotates to show the inside of the bullring at the moment of the kill- everyone frozen, including the bull, in dark red lighting. Accompanied by the musical climax, it left me frozen as well.

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