An intense week of opera-going (Don Giovanni, Xerxes, Don Giovanni, Carmen rehearsal, Siegfried, an aborted attempt at Susannah, Carmen) came to a conclusion with San Francisco Opera’s opening performance of their current Carmen. It was the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that dates back to 1981, with a common feature of all four sets being a a brick wall mostly covered with pale yellow plaster, and a long arch high above. In Act 1 there was a small door to the space on the other side of the wall, and a wall fountain from which townspeople could fill their jugs. There were some graffiti on the wall, the only legible one being “Viva Escamillo!” Just before the cigarette girls took their smoke break, the wall underneath the arch slid to the left, and a large double door with “Fabrica de Tabaco” slid in from the right. In Act 2, the area under the arch was filled with a large wooden platform up high and a staircase down to stage level. In Act 3 (the smuggler’s hideout in the mountains) the wall and the arch were still there, but the spaces below and behind the arch were filled with rocky landscape. In Act 4, in front of the bull ring, there was a large double door through which the crowd entered the arena, and a jailhouse-like metal gate through which the picadors and chulos and bandilleras marched to their jobs.
Our cast:
Carmen: Kendall Gladen
Don José: Thiago Arancam
Micaëla: Sara Gartland
Escamillo: Paulo Szot
Frasquita: Susannah Biller
Mercédès: Cybele Gouverneur
Le Dancaïre: Timothy Mix
Le Remendado: Daniel Montenegro
Moralès: Trevor Scheunemann
Zuniga: Wayne Tigges
Lillas Pastia: Yusef Lambert
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Jose Maria Condemi
Set Designer: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Kendall Gladen acted the part of Carmen magnificently. She’s tall, statuesque, moves well on stage, and her body language and facial expressions fit my notion of Carmen to a T. Her voice, however, did not carry as well as it did in the dress rehearsal. Thiago Arancam’s Don Jose sounded rather strained and forced. Paulo Szot’s Escamillo failed to generate any sparks. Sara Gartland sang an affecting Micaëla; her third-act aria keeps running through my mind. Wayne Tigges sounded more in his element as Zuniga than he did as Ariodates in last week’s Xerxes. Yusef Lambert, in the speaking part of Lillas Pastia, had the best projection of the cast.
In an interesting touch, Jose Maria Condemi staged the entr’acte to Act 3, having Don Jose give Carmen a ring (the one that she will give back to him in Act 4 by putting it on the tip of his knife) and put his hand on her belly; she reacted with a pantomime of swinging a baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms—and then laughed with gusto. At the very end, with Carmen dead on the ground, Don Jose put the ring back on her finger. It was only this final confrontation that generated much in the way of excitement; all the preceding was competent but short on magic. Somewhat shy of a beta.
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