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"Carmen Schmarmen" posted October 24, 2004 at 05:38 PM

As part of my ongoing I-Live-In-New-York-And-You-Can't-Stop-Me-From-Going-To-The-Opera-All-The-Damned-Time Festival, which I am wholeheartedly enjoying with my compadre Mark Fox, I attended a performance of Carmen this week at the Met. It was a truly strange night.

I had actually never heard the whole opera of Carmen before. In my violin-playing days I had played orchestral suites of music highlights from it in every orchestra from middle school and high school through the youth symphony and regional orchestras I played in. This music is pervasive in music education arenas, as well as in car commercials and old Warner Brothers cartoons. So imagine my surprise when this extremely familiar, extremely singable and memorable music turned out to be the fluffiest, most vapid opera I've ever listened to. I can't see why it's still in the operatic canon. It's so empty and French. It's very pretty, but it never surrounds you, never lifts you up. The previous week, seeing Otello, could not have been more different. But of course, that's Verdi for you--he sweeps you up, spins you round, then gently puts you back down as a whole new person.

This Carmen is a Zeffirelli production from 1999. Perhaps you've seen his Romeo and Juliet? Or his old workhorse picture-postcard La Boheme at The Met (that's next week for us!)? Well all the beauty, all the lush quality production values, all the charm, are ripped out of this production of Carmen. I kept having to resist calling out, "Dead stage!!" I mean, no one moved.

The singing was very good, however, and Domingo was conducting with sprightly tempos and lots of drama, so that helped give the music some heft.

It was fascinating to watch such a stilted production of such light music. I couldn't possibly imagine how to make it worse, except to go without Mark, who made laughing at it (almost) as much fun as if we had loved it.


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