Carmen – The Metropolitan Opera

Carrie Cracknell’s contemporary take aims at reinvigorating this classic with its resetting to present-day America but sadly is mostly firing blanks in its representation of a world that I’m not sure most Americans would even recognise.

In an unnamed town somewhere along the border with Mexico, naïve army corporal Don José (Piotr Beczała) falls head over heads in love with Carmen (Aigul Akhmetshina), a seductive and free-spirited girl working at the ammunitions factory that he and his men are guarding. Infatuated, Don José abandons his childhood sweetheart, girl-next-door Micaela (Angel Blue) and neglects his military duties only to lose the fickle Carmen to the glamorous rodeo rider, Escamillo (Kyle Ketelsen).

So far so good but given that much of the allure of the original is its setting in a scorching Sevilla where emotions might erupt at any minute in the midday sun, the alarm bells began ringing from the off since there was little in Michael Levine’s large bland set design to ignite the cast, let alone the passion at the heart of this piece. The projection onto the curtain at the start of each act whilst innovative added nothing to the story and smacked more of someone having a new toy to play with.

Cracknell, on her Met debut, is explicit about her own desire to explore 21^st Century issues through a feminist lens and here to focus on the issue of femicide but in making this production about a societal tragedy instead of an individual crime of passion, she has veered so far off-target from the original that the resulting Daisy Duke style over substance approach is so dumbed down that it not only lacks conviction in the performances but becomes illegible to the audience as to what it is trying to convey.

Notwithstanding this, the positives in terms of musicality remain – at least the score and the libretto cannot be changed – although it’s apparent that some performances were unsettled by the direction.

Akhmetshina retained some of the sassiness of Carmen but was perhaps sweeter rather than sultry with her seguidilla although her vocal and movement both delightfully remained beguiling. She has been performing Carmen since her Covent Garden breakthrough aged twenty-one and I would like to see her perform in its original guise because this production constrained her.

Beczała is an accomplished tenor with a fine body of work in his repertoire, but I have to say, he doesn’t naturally spring to mind as Don José and although his vocal was strong throughout, the confusion of the direction and the unnatural chemistry of his part clearly affected the conviction of his performance.

Blue has a strong vocal and her Act III aria is powerfully delivered but I couldn’t really work out who her Micaela was meant to be in a performance that was largely static. Ketelsen’s Escamillo was sung well but his rodeo star is emasculated somewhat in this interpretation and as a result has lost his swagger.

Conductor Daniel Rustioni focuses on the playful rhythmic strength of the score with the orchestra moving seamlessly between the castanet chromaticism of Carmen to the more romantic lyricism of Don José, which somewhat whimsical and delightfully played was often, for obvious reasons, not in accord with the directorial vision.

Interpretation is an important factor in attracting a new modern audience to the opera and one to be supported and encouraged but if you want to convey a storyline completely at odds with the original, as has happened here, either find a different opera or perhaps write a new one.

Reviewer: Mark Davoren

Reviewed: 27^th January 2024

North West End UK Rating: