Atlanta Opera’s reimagined ‘Carmen’ is delightfully dramatic

“Carmen,” Georges Bizet’s sprawling opera about a transfixing gypsy and the love triangle she cultivates, is one of the most performed operas in the world.

This familiarity – a dose of comfort amid chaos – should make “Carmen” the ideal opera for the pandemic. But performing the nearly three-hour opera, full of lavish sets and a large chorus, is untenable during COVID-19 due to safety protocols; large choruses can’t be socially distant, and the opera must be significantly shorter to meet pandemic guidelines.

For “Carmen” to work during the coronavirus pandemic, The Atlanta Opera’s general and artistic director Tomer Zvulun had to be a keen editor, streamlining the opera without reducing its impact. The result is a compelling drama presented in an open-air tent in the parking lot of the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, the organization’s true home. A live but thinned-out orchestra provides accompaniment from a separate tent, piped to the mainstage through speakers.

Thursday, The Atlanta Opera presented “The Threepenny Carmen,” a reimagining by Zvulun and conductor Jorge Parodi, that clocked in at around 100 minutes, creating visual splendor with flamenco dancers instead of legions of chorus singers. The signature arias and music are all there, but the drama suddenly seems much more true to life. While some of the grandiosity may have been lost, this new production is plenty thrilling and works well despite required pandemic precautions.

Instead of a gypsy encampment near Seville, Carmen’s world is the Threepenny Tavern, a dive bar in Texas. A new character, Lilas Pastia (Tom Key), serves as the owner of the tavern and a key narrative propellant. After the carnival-like overture, Pastia explains directly to the audience that the goal of every tavern patron is “surviving Carmen.” This breaking of the fourth wall brought the audience into the action. Extending the elevated stage into the audience also creates a physical closeness to the drama not present in last fall’s big tent series productions (or, for that matter, in traditional opera staging).

Credit: KenHoward

Credit: KenHoward

The love triangle of Bizet’s opera is still there, with Don Jose (the unforgettable Richard Trey Smagur) smitten by Carmen (Megan Marino), who is in turn in love with Zuniga (Jose Caballero). When he enters the Tavern and sees Carmen, Don Jose forgets all about his beloved Micaela (Jasmine Habersham), and in his single-minded obsession, ends up killing both Carmen’s suitor and the object of his obsession herself. And that’s not even taking the toreador Escamillo (the very funny Michael Mayes) into account.

Key’s character, complete with lazy Southern drawl and outsized attitude, helped shape the proceedings into more than just a series of arias. Dancer Sonia Olla’s entrancing flamenco steps wove through the entire production, grounding the action in the Spanish-themed Texas bar, but also providing an other-worldly, ephemeral quality to the performance.

Even with vaccines proliferating in the metro area, audience members were required Thursday to be masked at all times. Pods of two chairs were spaced three feet apart, consistent with new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As with the opera’s performances last fall, singers and dancers either wore masks or sang from within vinyl enclosures, which sounds odd but made sense with the storyline (think go-go cages).

The socially distant orchestra provided ample amplified sound, but at times it felt like the singers were performing to pre-recorded tracks. Habersham, Smagur and Marino sang with vitality and conviction, despite the masks and vinyl barriers.

“The Threepenny Carmen” embraces the coziness of familiar, beloved music, but also branches out, creating a new, satisfying work that could only have been borne of pandemic constraints. While last fall’s Atlanta Opera performances felt at times like opera despite pandemic challenges, “The Threepenny Carmen” is a fitting new entry into the opera oeuvre.