This is a review of Opera Philadelphia’s May 2, 2018 Performance of Carmen. If you have even a passing familiarity with Opera, you are likely aware that Carmen was written by George Bizet
I begin this review with a shameful admission. I had never watched Carmen before. Despite nearly three decades steeped in opera, I somehow failed to tick that particular box. My review, therefore, must be qualified. I have no basis by which to compare this production, and cannot claim any knowledge of how the show “should” be done.
Sets
I will begin with the sets, on which I can, at least, comment with some authority. They were lavish and large, particularly in comparison to the silent film Magic Flute, which Hannah and I watched last year. I could almost hear the stagehands grunting as they rolled these massive, two story set-pieces around during each intermission. The style this production used appeared to be a mid 20th century factory town. I can’t say when it was for sure, but it evoked a 40s or 50s (more likely 50s) light military dictatorship. My favorite setpiece by far was the smuggler’s den, a wall that ran diagonally from downstage left to upstage right, and shrank, creating a funky 3D forced perspective look. It is difficult to describe, but I found it quite impressive. At any rate, I have used quite enough words to say that the set was evocative and seemed to suit the story well.
Talent
I am rather less well-conditioned to rate the singers, but I shall endeavor to do so nevertheless.
Daniela Mack played Carmen (I believe you’ll be seeing her in Santa Fe this summer). As an actress she was incredible. Every movement perfectly evoked her character. She was poised, defiant, proud, sexy; everything you could possibly hope from a Carmen (I presume). I will say that her voice did not thrill me as I’d hoped it might. She sang well, but I would not say that she blew me away. Hannah said that she felt Daniela had trouble with some of the low notes. I cannot say that I shared this observation, so I can take no credit for it. All I can say is that she sang beautifully, but not ethereally.
Evan Leroy Johnson played Don Jose. I hate to say it, but I didn’t love him. I wasn’t blown away by his voice, and I felt that his physical acting in particular was just a tick too dramatic. That feels like a strange criticism to make about opera. He may well have been fine in a more dramatic production. All of his co-stars used slightly more restrained body language, however, so his more dramatic gestures seemed out of place. One could reasonably argue that they were intended to convey his heightened emotions and creeping hysteria, but from our seats he just looked like someone who couldn’t quite control his body. I do not wish to be entirely unfair to him. He did grow on me over the course of the show, and he sang quite well (he is a professional opera singer, after all). He just never really grabbed me. It didn’t help much that his character isn’t particularly likable in this production (more on that later).
Adrian Timpau (known, I assume, as the “Supernova from Moldova”) played Escamillo, and he was, in fact, ethereal. His voice was clear and beautiful. He rode in on a motorcycle for his Toreador aria and just killed it. He was loud, but pitch-perfect, and (I really can’t stress this enough) perfectly clear. It sounded like his voice got run through a Brita filter on its way out of his throat. He also acted with aplomb. He commanded space, moved with authority, and was just downright sexy. Given how tightly the role of Escamillo is bound up with my father, who performed as Escamillo many times throughout his career, I worried that Adrian would disappoint, and from the moment he opened his mouth, I am thrilled to report that he did not.
Kirsten Mackinnon played Micaela, and she, too, was a sensation. Her voice was also clear and beautiful. I thought she hit every note perfectly, and her voice reached us up at the very back in a way that few others did. She played a lovely ingenue, innocent, but determined, and I found myself fully entranced with her singing.
There are obviously many more characters, most of whom I will not call out by name, except for Ashley Milanese (Frasquita) and Anastasia Sidorova (Mercedes). These two women played first and third Ladies respectively in Magic Flute, and I enjoyed them thoroughly in that too. Dad, you also saw Ashley as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro. As far as I can tell, they only play smaller, bit roles at Opera Philadelphia. That is too bad, because their voices are absolutely fantastic. I do wonder if Opera Philadelphia uses them in the way that baseball teams use closers. They may not have the stamina to anchor a full show, but you put them in roles to bring them out periodically for some extra oomph when you’re worried the audience is beginning to flag. If so, it works. They absolutely grab the attention, and they act well and play well off of each other.
The Production
I found the production overall extremely interesting, and it is here that I find my inexperience with Carmen most frustrating. I do not know how most productions treat the characters and circumstances, but I found this production particularly topical. I could see the opera being much more sympathetic to Don Jose than this production was. If there were a subtitle to this show, it could have easily read Carmen: A Story of Toxic Masculinity. Don Jose starts off naïve, but his lunacy kicks in fairly early, and he seems to raise the stakes in every situation with Carmen. Perhaps it was written to come across as romantic, but here it seemed kind of boorish and possessive. Carmen, obviously, is in love, but her fleeting heart comes up several times, and so you never think she’s quite as invested as he is. Sure, she tries to convince him to run away with her, but he alternates between wild-eyed professions of love, and stern platitudes about duty, all of which give the impression of a guy you might want to keep at arm’s length.
By contrast, Escamillo is positively charming. I’ve always thought of his character as the villain of the piece (having never seen it, of course), but in this production at least, he seemed perfectly suited to Carmen. Two hot people who want to fall in love and fall out of love, and move on with their lives? That’s a match made in heaven by operatic standards. I had very little trouble siding with Escamillo, as it seemed to me that his love and affection seemed far more clear-eyed, and far less alarming than Don Jose’s. This is where I wonder about the intention of the opera.
I can easily imagine productions of Carmen in which Don Jose, the naïve, innocent, but overall nice boy is driven mad by an unfaithful woman and her trespassing lover. It would be easy to take Escamillo from charming to creepy and to make him more of a villain. In this show, he just seems like a talented, proud man, expressing his own kind of love, rather than an ignoble scoundrel. In this hypothetical production, the tragedy is the fall of a good man, dragged into evil by scheming or unworthy others. Carmen’s death, then, is sad, but look at what she did to the poor guy.
All of that is pure hypothesis, as this production leaned heavily into Don Jose’s strangely controlling behavior. He never seems quite right in the head, and violence seems to lurk just beneath the surface of his personality. In this show, we did not so much watch the corruption of a good man. What we see instead is a man who believes so deeply in his own goodness that he is unwilling to accept that the object of his love may not return his feelings. The tragedy here is not that others drive him to insanity, but that his own sense of entitlement does, and he dies without recognizing it.
Of course, Bizet may have intended all that when writing Carmen, in which case I have simply wasted several minutes of your time with that interpretation. Nevertheless, I found the show interesting, exciting, and topical, as so many discussions about masculinity and female autonomy rage throughout society. I’ll even go so far as to say that it was the best production of Carmen that I’ve ever seen.