Tulsa Opera's "Carmen" is one savory dish.
This is not a reference simply to mezzo-soprano Leann Sandel-Pantaleo, who sings the title role — even though she commands the stage with a confident, ferocious sensuality, and a robust, remarkably flexible and expressive voice.
It is, however, the best way to describe this production of Georges Bizet's opera, which opens Friday at the Tulsa PAC (we attended the Wednesday dress rehearsal).
A really great dish is one in which all the ingredients are immediately evident, yet perfectly in balance. And that's the impression this "Carmen" leaves.
It began with the overture. "Carmen" is described as a marvel of orchestration, and guest conductor Robert Tweten's direction of the Tulsa Opera Orchestra allowed all the elements of the orchestra to be clearly heard, each contributing their individual voice to the whole.
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The result was a performance that was a marvelous example of passionate restraint just forceful enough, never swooning through those well-known melodies.
On stage it is a slightly different matter a good thing, though, as "Carmen" is most definitely not an opera about restraint. It's about lust and obsession, madness and machismo, twists of fate that lead inexorably to a final twist of a knife.
Director Dean Anthony also worked to make sure this "Carmen" contains a little bit of everything, from low comedy (the clownish quintet "Nous avons en tête une affaire" is a kind of homage to the Opera Comique, for which "Carmen" was originally written) to high drama.
But that brief comic interlude aside, Anthony's staging keeps the action as verismo, as human, as possible. And it is something that the excellent cast Tulsa Opera has assembled for this production has taken strongly to heart.
Sandel-Pantaleo is a superb Carmen one of the best I've seen. The swagger with which she strides around the stage, the confident physicality that she employs to seduce a crowd or an individual, the cold fury and defiant contempt she unleashes when crossed or threatened Sandel-Pantaleo embodies all this most convincingly.
Her singing is equally rich and varied, from the sensually melodic purr underlying "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" to the dusky fatalistic card aria, "Carreau! Pique!... La mort!" Her phrasing is such that one is never in doubt about what Carmen is thinking and feeling at any given moment.
Jonathan Burton as Don Jose is equally adept at conveying character strictly through singing. In his duet with Karin Wolverton as Micaela, "Parle-moi de ma mère," his singing is bright, crisp and confident. By the time he's spent a couple of months in prison as a result of his obsession with Carmen, you can hear his sanity start to fray, in "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée."
By the time he shows up outside the bullring in the final act, one doesn't need to see his disheveled appearance to know this is a man at the end of his rope it's all there in the raging duet that starts with the simple exchange "C'est toi! C'est moi!"
Sandel-Pantaleo and Burton certainly are first among equals in this cast, but there's not a bad voice in the bunch. As Escamillo the bull fighter, Richard Ollarsaba makes you believe he could halt a charging bull with the power of his voice the way he conveys the suspense of a corrida in "Votre toast" (better known as the "Toreador" song) is most effective. And Wolverton captures the innocence of Micaela without making her seem child-like and naive.
"Carmen" will be performed 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Tulsa PAC, 101 E. Third St. For tickets: 918-587-4811, myticketoffice.com
James D. Watts Jr. 918-581-8478