Take away the pretty but dramatically irrelevant window dressing, and the "Carmen" that settled in for a long winter’s run over the weekend at the Civic Opera House is pretty much your standard-issue production of Bizet’s tune-laden tragedy.
There is some fine singing, most notably that of Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja as Don Jose, the callow young corporal whose obsession with the Gypsy seductress Carmen spells his doom; and Italian lyric soprano Eleonora Buratto as Micaela, his village sweetheart, who tries to rescue him from Carmen’s clutches. Both proved to be the real deal heading the cast fielded by Lyric Opera on Saturday night, under the spirited and sympathetic baton of Harry Bicket.
But the rest rather resembles a three-hour story ballet that tended to swamp the narrative in buckets of Spanish-flavored dancing.
One authentic touch in the staging by Tony-winning director and choreographer Rob Ashford — a coproduction with the Houston Grand Opera that is being seen here for the first time — is Lyric’s replacing the standard sung recitatives with spoken dialogue. As far as one can tell, every other Lyric production of "Carmen" going back to the company’s first season in 1954 employed the time-dishonored Guiraud recitatives.
Amplified so as to carry in the cavernous, 3,500-seat auditorium, the singers’ idiomatic French diction meant that there were no awkward seams between the spoken and sung portions of the opera.
Yet there was a cognitive dissonance between this bow to Bizet’s original intentions and the showy Broadway sensibility of Ashford’s staging, which was first given at Lyric general director Anthony Freud’s former Texas bailiwick in 2014. The Bizet work marks only the second opera Ashford has staged anywhere, following the much more successful mounting of Rossini’s "The Barber of Seville" he created for Lyric’s 2013-14 season.
Doubts already arose in the orchestral prelude, when a writhing male dancer wearing a bull’s mask was trapped in a circle of dancing toreadors. Appearing throughout the action each time the "fate" motive sounded in the orchestra, this Minotaur-like figure soon became an annoying distraction. The doomed creature was there to prefigure Carmen’s death — we got it.
So it went: Six ballerinos encircling mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova during her singing of Carmen’s "Habanera" as they hoisted female partners around her; dancing toreros emerging from under the long skirts of their senoritas outside the bullring of Act 4. (Lyric is presenting the show in two long acts separated by a single intermission.)
The dancers were excellent, but the choreography came across as an embellishment straight out of Broadway — swirls of fancy footwork and colorful costuming that effectively distanced the audience from the stark human drama it was meant to enhance.
Nor could all the dancing disguise the ordinariness of the dramatic blocking, with its clunky parades of children and soldiers, and choristers lining up at the footlights in stand-and-deliver formation.
Lighting designer Donald Holder bathed David Rockwell’s quasi-abstract sets in hot reds, blues, oranges and pinks. The action was updated from 19th century Seville to 1930s or 1940s Spain, costumer Julie Weiss dressing the cigarette factory women in long black dresses more appropriate for evening wear. Setting "Carmen" during the Franco era gave Ashford a chance to put a fascist spin on the drama but made zilch of that intriguing possibility.
Gubanova gave us a Carmen who was less a voluptuous sexual predator than a clever opportunist who uses her sexuality transactionally as a means of securing her freedom. The Russian diva, who collaborates regularly with Riccardo Muti, created her character more through beautiful (if calculated) singing than committed acting. Her mezzo has the alluring savor of dark red wine, with smoky accents, a supple chest register if moments of unsteadiness at the top.
But there was little smoldering temperament or sense of danger in her performance, and the final scene was a real letdown, so passively resigned to her fate did Carmen appear to be. This "Carmen" was Gubanova’s role debut. No doubt she will settle into this touchstone mezzo part more deeply with experience. For now, however, one must be content with a promissory note.
Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili will make her Lyric debut heading the second "Carmen" cast for the March 16-25 performances.
If ever there was an opera role made to order for Calleja’s superb tenor, it’s Don Jose. The part may be a relatively recent addition to his repertory, but vocally and dramatically he gripped one’s attention as the young man’s passion for Carmen became more and more desperate, his jealousy more heated the more she rebuffed him. The clarion heft of his sound was tempered by an elegant legato, sensitive phrasing and feel for the drama. His shift to head voice and lovely diminuendo at the close of the "Flower Song" were well-managed, earning him a warm ovation.
Brandon Jovanovich will go in for Calleja in Lyric’s second run of performances in March.
Buratto’s Micaela was no simpering ingenue of tradition but a spunky, good-hearted young woman determined to rescue the man she loves from his life as an outlaw in Carmen’s gang of smugglers. Her singing of the third-act aria was everything this famous piece should be, vibrant and richly shaded.
The role of Escamillo likewise proved to be a congenial fit for bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, a longtime Lyric regular and one of the star graduates of the Ryan Opera Center. This swaggering bullfighter came off rather like Carmen’s soul mate in the sense that both knew full well how to curry adulation. Van Horn’s delivery of the famous "Toreador Song" was so solid as to make you wish the director had scrapped the backup dance routine that surrounded that showpiece.
Lyric drew on its deep bench of Ryan Center apprentices to fill supporting roles. Saturday’s performance brought commendable performances from Takaoki Onishi as the officer Morales, Bradley Smoak as Jose’s opportunistic superior Zuniga, Emmett O’Hanlon and Mingjie Lei as the head smugglers, Diana Newman and Lindsay Metzger as Carmen’s gal pals, and Alec Carlson as the innkeeper Lillas Pastia. The standouts were Newman’s lively Frasquita and the promising O’Hanlon’s self-assured Dancaire.
Heretofore associated with Lyric’s baroque repertory, Bicket gave a spirited and sweeping account of the Bizet score, bringing out its rhythmic zest while refining instrumental detail in an enlivening and persuasive manner. Sensible tempo choices and smooth coordination between stage and pit were much in evidence. The orchestra played well (a couple of offstage trumpet cracks notwithstanding), while the contributions of director Michael Black’s adult chorus and the Chicago Children’s Chorus proved equally enthusiastic.
3 stars
Lyric Opera’s production of Bizet’s "Carmen" runs through March 25 at the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive; $17-$349; 312-827-5600, www.lyricopera.org.
John von Rhein is a Tribune critic.
jvonrhein@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @jvonrhein
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