Like a slow-burning fuse, it took a long time for Los Angeles Opera’s opening night performance of “Carmen,” Saturday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, to ignite Georges Bizet’s powder keg of passion.
The red carpet was out, though the traditional free-flowing opening night champagne was nowhere to be seen. In fact, except for those attending the walled-off gala, the energy level and haphazard dress code hardly suggested the event was special at all. But then, people in Los Angeles rarely dress up for anything except the Oscars, the Emmys and the Grammys.
Remarkably, Plácido Domingo, the company’s 72-year-old maestro, who had been hospitalized in July after suffering a pulmonary embolism, was on the podium and seemingly back to his Energizer Bunny pace.
And then there was “Carmen.”
Listless is not the word you usually equate with Bizet’s tempestuous opera. But the first act — featuring Irish mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon as Carmen; the American tenor Brandon Jovanovich as the beguiled corporal of the guard, Don José; and South African soprano Pretty Yende as the innocent village girl, Micéla — just couldn’t get going, even though the company has chosen to cut the opera’s spoken dialog in an effort to move things along.
As directed by Trevore Ross (in his company debut), the passing parade of soldiers, street urchins and cigarette girls lacked so much tension and focus it seemed to be moving in slow motion. Bardon’s Carmen was sultry and smoldering, but there was no fire. It was like the fake cigarettes the cast was pretending to smoke.
It wasn’t until Act 2, with its swirling flamenco dancers (expertly choreographed by Briseyda Zárate Fernández) and the arrival of bass-baritone Ildebrando D’Arcangelo as the cock-of-the-walk matador, Escamillo, that the performance finally ignited.
The vast cavernous interior of Lillas Pastia’s tavern (originally designed by Gerardo Trotti for Teatro Real, Madrid) was awash in brash machismo, sensuous femininity and potential violence, with D’Arcangelo dominating the scene like a force of nature.
Bardon, whose Carmen combines come-hither seduction with hard-edged pragmatism, danced for her lover, and Jovanovich (more of a Boy Scout than a fiery Latin lover) made the fateful decision to follow his beloved Carmencita into a life of crime.
The rapid-fire quintet between Carmen, the smugglers, El Dancaïro (Museop Kim) and Remendado (Keith Jameson) and the Gypsy girls, Mercédés (Carmen Zoé Velasco) and Frasquita (Hae Ji Chang) crackled. But there was also the quirky addition of a towering drag queen (reminiscent of Divine, the star of “Pink Flamingos”) who takes it upon him (or her) self to gun down the pompous lieutenant, Zuniga, (Valentine Aniken) with the callous indifference of “Breaking Bad.”
The third act shifts to the mountain pass where the smugglers gather and the relationship between Carmen and Don José turns as rocky as the landscape. It’s also at this moment that Micéla reappears and her rendition of “Je dis rien ne m’épouvante’ (“I tell myself nothing daunts me”) was a vocal highlight of the performance.
The final scene outside the bull ring in Seville, with its colorful mish-mash of costumes by Jesus del Pozo, provides the background for the final confrontation. But again, Ross’s direction fails to give the moment of truth the emotional gravity it requires.
The great British director Peter Brook once created a scaled-down version of “Carmen” inside the replica of a wooden bull ring covered in sand. The idea was to show how the drama could be simplified and pinpointed in a manner that would charge the imagination and rend the heart. LA Opera’s production goes the other way in a muddled attempt at grandiosity that diffuses the passion rather than intensifying it.
Jim Farber is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.