Carmen at the Met – flawed singing, bizarre casting and flaccid direction
My opera-fanatic friend, whose company I enjoyed at the Met for a performance of Carmen on Monday, sent me a lengthy review the following day – “Pftt!”
Never thought four letters could convey so much. Disappointment; dismissal; frustration. This season’s revival of the excellent Sir Richard Eyre production, first outing in 2009 and set in the era of Franco’s Spain, was chock-full of errors – flawed singing, bizarre casting, strange musical interpretation and flaccid direction. It may pick up over the rest of the season’s run through February but there is work to be done.
Carmen, French mezzo Clémentine Margaine, was in patchy form. There were moments when her breathing was all over the place. Some long, sinuous lines were chopped with unplanned intakes of breath. Her voice was simply not strong enough to fill the huge Met auditorium, or dominate, as a credible Carmen must.
And her seductive powers were severely curtailed by a strange costume featuring what might have been a granny shawl. Some Carmens are way overdressed. Evening-dress clad vamps as cigarette factory workers are ridiculous. But, Mme. Margaine’s drab costume made it sometimes difficult to pick her out in the melee of onstage action.
Don José, French tenor, Roberto Alagna, sang – as one would expect – beautifully, but seemed to have had the stuffing knocked out of him. Spurned by Carmen he looked mildly pissed off. For goodness sake, man, you have been destroyed.
The toreador, Escamillo, Russian Bass, Alexander Vinogradov, is a slight figure, so needed to assert himself all the more, vocally. His voice had a strange, strangled, nasal timbre; also, too much vibrato, to the point of being distracting. I tried to replicate the nasal bit in front of the bathroom mirror and have concluded that the back of his tongue is rising too close to his palate. There’s a free tip for his voice coach. I checked him out on YouTube and concluded he was perhaps having a bad night – except for the vibrato, which is unalterable.
He was badly cast. He is far from being a commanding figure. Not much can be done about that. And as the whole plot hinges on him swaggering and sweeping Carmen off her feet, a first timer at Carmen must have been wondering whatever she saw in him. There was no powerful acting to compensate.
He looked like he had wandered in from Ermenegildo Zegna’s 5th Avenue shop window. I don’t go to bull fights often (last outing 1979), so maybe now the costume du jour is a black suit, white shirt and thin dark tie – and that’s à la mode aujourd’hui. I could just be behind the times (en retard). And, where was the flamboyant bullfighter’s hat? De rigueur, in my ideal Carmen.
Micaëla, Alexandra Kurzak, a Polish soprano, was a poignant presence with a light coloratura voice, which works well in this role. Her elegant avoidance of the clutches of the lusty soldiers in Act 1 was a perfect balance of coyness and determination – and very funny.
Louis Langrée, French Musical Director of the Cincinnati Orchestra, conducted. A right mess he made of it from the off-go. The Prelude is a sinuous piece, whetting the appetite for the complex drama ahead. M. Langrée used it as a battering ram, taking the whole thing at an Allegro Furioso tempo. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
The indications on the score are Allegro Giocoso, with the Toreador aria teaser in the middle taken at Allegro Molto Moderato. The abrupt change signals a sharp mood change. M. Langrée did slow down a bit, reluctantly, as if for an annoying speed bump. But the whole effect of the prelude being a bonne bouche tossed at the audience to whet the appetite for the drama about to unfold was lost.
He also lost it several times, with singers and chorus being noticeably out of sync. Schoolboy error. Not his fault was the annoying clumping about the stage – completely out of time with the music – of the dancers in the Habanera. Someone needs to click onto Amazon and buy choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon, a metronome. This was proof proper of shoddy rehearsal and inexcusable in a top flight company.
I shall charitably assume that the intention to drain the action of drama was intentional on the part of Paula Williams, the Revival Stage Director, so simply misguided. If it was an accident it is unpardonable.
The narrative of Carmen is framed in a series of dramatic confrontations – Micaëla/Don José; Carmen/Don José; Escamillo/Carmen – ranging across a spectrum of action from seduction to fatal violence. Each confrontation is a fulcrum on which the plot pivots, then shoots off in another direction. They need to be, well, ….. dramatic.
What we were treated to were a series of minor bar room confrontations – apart from Carmen’s seduction of Don José, which was “compelling”. Understatement. Almost cue embarrassment. Excellent.
Sir Richard Eyre’s production stands the test of time, save for one bizarre shortcoming I have never liked. Why on earth is the cigarette factory located underground? In Act 1 trapdoors – apparently in the courtyard of the barracks – are opened and dazed chicas cigarreras emerge one by one. Maybe a point is being made about labour conditions in Franco’s Spain. If so, it’s a heavy-handed one.
I can’t escape the feeling that the dramatic, swirling set construction simply had no room for a factory workshop. “Er, very good barracks Sir Richard, but what do we do about the cigarette factory”? “Oh, hell! Um …. Let’s stick it underground.” So, the chicas emerge like baffled prisoners from the dungeon in Beethoven’s Fidelio iconic liberation scene.
Not enough attention has been paid to this revival. Maybe familiarity breeds, if not contempt, carelessness. The Met has been criticised elsewhere for bringing in “second string” performers for some of its productions, including this Carmen. I disagree entirely. Part of the Met’s historic role has been to introduce fresh faces to its audiences. Singers are all “second string” at some early point in their careers. Miscasting is another matter entirely.
This Carmen is, up to a point, fixable, But, as for Monday night’s performance? – “Pftt!”