Alfons Flores’ sets are spare but, with the exception of the opera’s final scene (in which the wide open stage doesn’t really do a convincing job conveying the tightening noose of Fate and Carmen’s inexorable demise), readily convey the menace and mystery of the story’s setting. Much of the production itself is effective. It just lacks some conventional discretion. It has its provocative moments, surely, a well as its confusing ones, but it mostly sticks to the script: aside from updating the action to the 1970s, replacing the smugglers’ donkeys with several 1970s-era Mercedes sedans, and moving the locale from Spain to Spanish North Africa, this is in many ways a traditional Carmen. So what are the takeaways? Well, first of all, Bieito’s Carmen isn’t scandalous, at least not by any modern definition. This past weekend, after lots of hoopla, BLO kicked off its itinerant 40th-anniversary season with the local premiere of Bieito’s Carmen at the Boston Opera House. Next year, he’s directing a new La forza del destino at the Metropolitan Opera and, this season, San Francisco Opera and Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) have brought his 1999 production of Bizet’s Carmen to the States. For better or worse, precious little of Bieito’s craft has made it to these shores. If there’s any theater director European critics (and some audiences) love to hate, it’s Calixto Bieito, whose sex-and violence-heavy reimaginings of the core operatic repertoire sometimes seem designed simply to ruffle feathers. Carmen (Jennifer Johnson Cano) scrawls “love” on the chest of solider Joseph Yonaitis in Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen.” Photo: T Charles Erickson. A co-production with Boston Lyric Opera and San Francisco Opera at the Opera House, 539 Washington Street, Boston, MA through October 2. Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy Production, Calixto Bieito. Carmen’s vocal shortcomings are frustrating but, from a production standpoint, Bieito’s vision – even if it’s not quite as racy as advertised – comes off better than any new canonical production I’ve seen BLO present in the recent past.Ĭarmen.
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