So: I watched Carmen for the seven hundredth time last night. Okay okay, let's not go nuts; realistically, I believe it was the fourth time I'd seen it start to finish. I realize that this is not exactly an outré opinion, but I think this is my single favorite opera. There's just something about it that really feels like it embodies the form, at least as far as tragedy goes. More than any other opera I've seen, maybe, the protagonists just feel like they're locked by virtue of their unchangeable natures into this ineluctably grim drama. Great music is aided by a great libretto in making something...great. Okay.
Most recently I saw this version:
It's probably my favorite thusfar. It was the first time I'd seen the original Opéra-Comique version with spoken dialogue, so I thought it might play significantly differently, but nah. There's actually very little chatting; even as a general non-fan of talking in operas, both versions are similar enough that it makes essentially no difference. I'm just going to go through it and talk about the characters a little, if you don't mind or even if you do.
Carmen (Anna Caterina Antonacci)
When you think about operatic heroines, and you think about the ideal casting from a physical perspective, you'd probably mostly tend to think, well, they should be as attractive as possible. But that's not really the case for Carmen. It's not good enough, and it might even be counterproductive: the whole thing about her (or at least one thing about her) is rejecting conventional societal ideas, and that includes standards of beauty. What she really needs to be is magnetic; to have this dangerously alien, seductive feel, along with the kind of fatal charm that would lead a dopey schmuck like José to murder, and Antonacci has that down, I can tell you.
What's interesting is that, as operas go, even the big parts here aren't that big, comparatively speaking. I think it's because the music is really spread out among even minor characters. But of course Carmen remains the biggest, and a great role. I think we sometimes take "L'amour est un oiseau rebel" for granted, just because it's so familiar, but goddamn is that an absolutely perfect aria, even if "perfect" is impossible to define in the situation and probably meaningless. It's just so sinuous, the music perfectly complementing the lyrics. And really, after hearing it, dumb ol' José has no one to blame but himself. Can't say she didn't warn him.
Don José (Jonas Kaufmann)
José is really the viewpoint character of the opera. Carmen herself is too closed-off and in many ways unknowable to serve that function. Still, I would like to hear a female perspective. 'Cause I'm not gonna lie: I was in a situation once where I felt like Don José, or would have had I been into opera at the time, though I should emphasize that this never led to murder or violence of any kind (and seriously, if he'd just given himself a day or so to cool off, he probably would've realized that not worrying about this woman was actually a huge relief, and everything would've been fine). And yet, that might be a situation that half of the population cannot identify with. I don't know!
But to me, anyway, he's very effective as a protagonist. You can feel his anguish, for sure. But the weird thing is, his actual dang music is way less interesting than any other significant character in the opera. Sure, you have "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée" (the "Flower Song"), and sure the final scene is, like, climactic, but what else? Not that much else, I feel! I get that a tenor would see this role as desirable, in that it's the male lead of one of the biggest operas ever, but is it really that terrific? It feels like putting a star of Jonas Kaufmann's caliber in the part is sort of like machine-gunning a mosquito.
Escamillo (Ildebrando D'Arcangelo)
Another role I kind of wonder about. Sure, swaggering about is fun, and you do have your big hit aria, but you really don't have much else. His knife-fight duet with José is all right, and then there's a short love duet with Carmen and that's it. And the character, of course, is incredibly shallow; there's not a lot you can really do to deepen him.
Still, D'Arcangelo does a great job with him; the best I've seen. I know him for playing Dulcamara in several productions of L'Elisir, but he neatly slots into this very different role. I feel like a lot of the time the baritone playing him just characterizes him as a cocky douchebag; D'Arcangelo doesn't play it against the grain or anything, but he makes him legit charming and suave in a way where you can see how Carmen would be into him. But ultimately, when it comes to Escamillo, all you really need is a confident motherfucker who can belt out "Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre," and we dang well get that here.
Micaëla (Norah Amsellem)
A lot of people don't like Micaëla, seeing her as the conventional "good girl" in contrast to the more colorful Carmen, which I guess she is, but guess what? I like her anyway! I wish she didn't just disappear, but aside from that!
(And, side note, but the one slightly off thing in the libretto is the way José goes off with her at the end of the third act to see his dying mother and then just reappears in the fourth, never mentioning it and seemingly having been wholly unaffected by it. Also, imagine the two of them having to be in close proximity for however many days it took to get there. Did they make small talk? Aaaaawkwaaaard!)
I just feel bad for her, being abandoned by her fiancé for a woman for whose murder he'd later be hanged. That's rough. And yet, I feel like she's gonna get through it. Her entire role but especially her great aria "Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante" make me think that she's really quite mentally strong. I'm rooting for her, and Norah Amsellem is quite good. For this role, you'd want a conventionally attractive woman to contrast with Carmen, and dammit, I think there are sexist elements in this article. So it goes.
Frasquita and Mercédès (Elena Xanthoudakis and Viktoria Vizin)
How 'bout these two, eh? They're Carmen's friends, whose names you probably wouldn't know without looking them up. But they actually get a lot to do, notably sing in the operetta-ish quintet "Nous avons en tête une affaire;" "Melons! Coupons!" (the "Card Trio"), in which they're goofing around using the cards to make up fantasy futures (Mercédès is the one who wants to be a rich widow) until Carmen comes in and predicts only the ineluctability of her own death (possibly my favorite number in the opera); and the further trio "Quant au douanier c'est notre affaire," where they try to shake off her black thoughts by singing about how they're going to flirt their way past the customs officers. I think you could argue that considered as one character, they're as important musically as Escamillo or Micaëla.
The point is, I like them, and it seems like it would be a good sneaky opportunity for a low-profile singer to get a good bit of exposure, since the roles are considered small but you're still doing quite a bit. And the singers I've seen in the roles all really seem to get that and dig into them with relish, Xanthoudakis and Vizin being no exceptions.
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Of course, there's still the question of why Carmen lets herself be killed. You can--and a lot of people do!--say that it's just her defiant attitude and refusal to give in, which I suppose is a conventionally feminist reading but one that really fails to consider her morbid obsession with the inevitability of her own death. I don't know if there's a good answer or if there needs to be. But one thing's for sure: we ought to be able to judge for ourselves! And on that note, check this out:
So it's "Si tu m'aimes, Carmen," the duet between her and Escamillo. And she declares her deep love for him. But what exactly does she say? Well, in this production, per the subtitle, it's "I've never loved anyone as much as you." But that sort of took me aback, because I distinctly remember that the last Met in HD version I saw had it "I'll love you 'til the day I die." In most cases this wouldn't be super-important, but dammit, there's a mystery here, and you're not helping by obscuring the text and changing what it says! Whichever one of you is wrong here really botched it.
So naturally, I went to the libretto, and, whoops! the direct English translation is actually "may I die if I've ever loved anyone as much as you." For fuck's sake, people! You both managed to screw up, only in slightly different ways! What an idiotic display! Do better.
There's one more thing I want to say, that isn't really related to the opera itself and which nobody really has any reason to care about. But! Here it is anyway! There are three Live in HD performances of Carmen available, from 2010, 2014, and 2018. They're all the same production (a very sturdy one, set in Fascist Spain), so they're all basically the same, but there are a few differences! The most prominent one being this: in both the 2010 and 2018 performances, in the final act José stabs Carmen and then supports her as she slumps to the ground so that she dies in his arms. Okay, that works. But in the 2014 one (with Anita Rachvelishvili), he stabs her and then stands back, while she sways there for a few moments and then just pitches over on her face. I suppose it's more athletically impressive than the other way, but it seems to lend a possibly-undesirable air of bathos to the proceedings. Weird choice.
