Arts & Events

A Riveting CARMEN at San Francisco Opera

Reviewed by James Roy MacBean

Saturday December 21, 2024 - 08:54:00 PM

Georges Bizet’s Carmen was last seen here in 2019 in Francesca Zambello’s production, which is now revved. I attended the Saturday evening performance on November 16 at the War Memorial Opera House. Thankfully, unlike so many recent productions here of the standard opera reportory, this Carmen is not arbitrarily quirky or gimicky. While lively and full of movement, it is a largely traditional production. However, it offered one very arbitrary and gratuitous touch at the very beginning. Once the overture was over, very briskly led by conductor Benjamin Manis, ,a brief orchestral opening to Act I was accompanied by a dumbshow pantomime on a dark stage. A man dressed in white squats and seems to be in anguish. Then a man in uniform appears and grabs the man in white, rushing him offstage. Who these two men were supposed to be is anyone’s guess. This is no way to begin an opera when we have no idea who these dumbshow individuals are supposed to represent! It simply brings an unnecessary confusion to the opera as a whole. Seeing this, I shuddered, suspecting we were in for yet another quirky staging under Mathew Shilvock’s reign here as General Director. 

But as Act I got underway, I was pleased to find nothing quirky or arbitrary in the staging, which was rich in colorful movement and vivid acting and singing by the crowd outside a cigarette factory in Seville, watched over by soldiers. When Micaela arrives seeking Don José, her village sweetheart, the soldiers try to flirt with her to no avail. Incidentally, Micaela’s character is entirely the creation of librettists Meilhac and Halévy, since this character is absent from Prosper Merimée’s novella on which Bizet’s opera is based. Micaela leaves when told Don José is not present but will be soon at the changing of the guard. Now the girls who work in the cigarette factory emerge for a break, and we get our first glimpse of Carmen, who teases the soldiers with the famous Habanera and throws a flower to the seemingly disinterested Don José. French mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux was a sensuous, vivacious Carmen, who sang with impeccable diction and fine intonation, though sometimes lacking strong vocal projection. In this opera, as in nearly all French operas, the sung words are supposed to be clearly heard by the audience. Although I know the words of this opera by heart, I sometimes had difficulty hearing the words clearly projected by Eve-Maud Hubeaux’s Carmen. In the role of Don José, Chilean tenor Jonathan Tetelman was superb, singing gracefully and vividly portraying Don José’s initially hesitant then ardent fascination with the seductive Carmen. When she invites him to be her lover and meet her at the taverna of her friend Lillas Pastia, Don José lets her escape from arrest, an act for which he is sentenced to two months in miiitary prison.  

Act II opens in Lillas Pastia’s taverna, where a band of smugglers plans their next caper. This scene featured brilliant choreography by Anna=Marie Bruzzese. When the famed toreador, Escamiullo, arrives to the applause of his fans, Escamillo, brilliantly sung by bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, delivers his famous Toreador aria. But when he flirts with Carmen, she rejects him. She also refuses her smuggler band’s insistence that she join them in going to the mountains. When pressed, Carmen declares that she’s in love and awaits the arrival of her new lover. When Don José arrives, newly freed from prison, she dances and sings for him. He declares his love. But when he hears a bugle call calling soldiers to return to base for a rolll-call, Don José reluctantly prepares to leave Carmen. She berates him with scathing sarcasm. This scene was well-acted and sung. When Captain Zuniga, strongly sung by bass-baritone James McCarthy arrives to proposiition Careen, Don José and Zuniga fight, and Carmen’s smugglers seize Zuniga and tie him up. Now Don José is so compromised he agrees to join Carmen and her smugglers.  

Acr III is set in the mountains. The smugglers reconnoiter, leaving Don José, Carmen, and the women at the camp. Frasquita, sung by soprano Arianna Rodriguez, and Mercedes, sung by mezzo/-soprano Nicola Printz,read the cards to tell their fortunes,. When Carmen tries the cards to read her fortune, it speaks of death for her and for Don José. Suddenly, Micaela arrives, having followed Don José.. But before she meets José, Escamillo arrives ,declaring his love for Carmen. Now Carmen is intrigued. She promises to meet him in Seville. Before Micaela meets José, she sings a devout prayer that the Lord will protect her in this dangerous mission. Encountering José, Micaela tells him his mother is dying. José agrees to go with her to his village. But he alerts Carmen he will see her again.  

Act IV opens outside the bullfight arena in Seville. Escamillo enters in the bullfighters’ procession, with Carmen by his side. They declare their love.. Frasquita and Mercedes warn Carmen that Don Joeé is lurking in the crowd., urging her to avoid him. Carmen declares that she is unafraid. When Escamillo and the crowd enter the arena, Don José appears and pleads with Carmen not to leave him. When she repeatedly refuses him, he stabs her and and kills her. Unlike in many productions, however, Don José does not kill himself after killing Carmen, buit, true to the original libretto, stoically awaits arrest by the police. All told, this is a fine production of Bizet’s Carmen, well sung and colorfully staged. Thus it is a welcome relief from the many recent examples of directorial overreach at San Francisco Opera. g