From the time baritone Zachary Angus intones the opening solo notes of “Carmen’s” vocal line in Boheme Opera New Jersey’s production of Bizet’s classic last weekend, you are assured this “Carmen” would join a long line of Boheme programs in featuring meticulous singing that boasts excellence in pitch, tone, vibrance, drama, and intent.
Alison Bolshoi sang the title role of Carmen in Boheme Opera’s production of Bizet’s classic opera.
To a person, the leads in this production, conducted by Joseph Pucciatti and directed by Stefanos Koroneos, express their characters fully and articulately. There’s fire and proud naughtiness in Alison Bolshoi’s Carmen, passion and hurt in Gregory Turay’s Don José, demure concern and gentle sensibility in Rachael Long’s Micaëla, macho pomp in Jason Duika’s Escamillo, mischievous fun in Alize Francheska Rozsnyai’s Frasquita and Erin Rosales’s Mercédès, and direct purpose in Angus’s anchoring Moralès.
Vocal extension extends to the Boheme chorus and 18 amazing members of Princeton’s Children’s Chorus from Westrick Music Academy. Thanks to them, all harmonies were defined and powerful. If opera is singing, the Boheme ensemble was superb. Bolshoi, in particular, emphasized the poetry of Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac’s image-laden libretto and the zest, energy, melody of Georges Bizet’s rousing, evocative score.
Opera is more than singing. It’s theater. It’s presentation. It’s the creation of realistic relationships that move audiences beyond the ultra-dramatic plots and seething passion of the text.
In these departments, Boheme’s “Carmen” was a throwback to a past generation of opera when the aria was everything, and theatrical considerations were incidental. It was an example of the “stand and deliver” presentations that put the singer of the moment center stage and let him or her do their histrionic best while the rest of the company milled about in patient abeyance.
“Stand and deliver” was a popular mode when I first started attending opera in the 1970s. I was an active proponent in changing that style to one that realizes the full range of theater and places equal emphasis on acting, character development, and more natural staging.
For all that I enjoyed the singing, I found Boheme’s “Carmen” static and old-fashioned.
The surprise there was that the approach was so different from recent company productions of “Madama Butterfly,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” all of which incorporated more movement and gave fuller scope to the entirety of the work rather than settling for a parade of solos, duets, quartets, and ensemble pieces in which the characters barely relate to one another. They stand looking forward on opposite sides of the stage. They do not look at each other. They renege on obvious cues, in Bizet’s music and Halévy and Meilhac’s libretto, to come together, embrace, or confront one another more straightforwardly.
You see the contrasts on the occasions when Koroneos gives Carmen and Don José the opportunity to vent their hurt, anger, and taunting face-to-face, at times blow-by-blow.
Gregory Turay sang the role of Don José.
Gregory Turay’s José takes on renewed life and exudes danger and excitement at these moments, Alison Bolshoi, who has obvious gifts as an actress, gets to show her range. These aggressive sequences, too few for my taste, demonstrate what “Carmen” could have been if Koroneos had been more willing to loosen his performer’s rein and allow them to explore the more intense side of two of opera’s most intense and sincerely determined characters.
Slaps, pushes, tight holds, and other passionate or violent acts take place, but they are often too late to save the dramatic temperament of the scene. More often, Koroneos plants Bolshoi stage left and Turay stage right, more towards the wings than the center, and directs them to sing more to the Kendall Theatre house than to each other.
This odd division of the stage crimps several sequences in Koroneos’s production. At times, it’s impossible to focus on the entire mise en scene because you need to choose whether you want to see Bolshoi as she sings “Les tringles des sistres tintaiant,” in which Carmen conveys her high spirits, imagistically expresses her ideas of love and the fun she wants from it, and shows off her ability as an entertainer or watch the wonderful dance troupe enlisted for Boheme’s production, the Alborada Spanish Dance Theatre, go through their colorful and exciting Flamenco moves.
You can’t do both. I tried from a centrally located seat. Koreonos has placed Bolshoi too far stage left to keep her in view while the Alborada dancers click their castanets and stomp up a storm center right.
I kept wanting to redirect the traffic to move Bolshoi’s Carmen more right or place her center with the Alborada troupe dancing behind her. Either way, you’d get a full effect instead of having to swivel to see one, then the other separately.
The chorus fades out of the picture totally at the point, They, and especially Frasquita and Mercédès, have important vocal duties in this scene, but they are consigned to the background and lost.
Too often, the chorus will make a cumbersome entrance, only to be bunched around a table or an upstage corner. Koroneos has them do some moving, but it’s self-conscience and not enough to convey the conviviality of Bizet’s Seville setting or the normal café or factory life of the people who inhabit it. Even the fight in which Carmen stabs a cigarette factory colleague is weak and seems to come out of nowhere instead of being built up with tension.
Jason Duika played Escamillo.
The relationship between the characters also suffers in Koroneos’s staging. At no time, except by the script saying it, is it clear that Carmen loves Don José, that Don José loves Carmen, or that Carmen and Escamillo, the toreador, share an attraction. The only moments in which any of this is successfully acted in when Koroneos releases Carmen and José from their opposite corners of the stage and lets them enter the ring as combatants.
The story of “Carmen” is played, but the drama of it isn’t. It makes all of the characters look stupid, without emotional underpinnings for their actions, and, frankly, too unsavory to care about or root for.
The lone exception is Rachael Long’s Micaëla. From her entrance, looking for Don José in a tavern near his military post to her equally heart-wrenching search and appeal to him in the hills above Seville, Long conveys a sympathetic character you want to see heeded and made content. Her “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante” was particularly lovely and moving.
Before the minuses drown the pluses, it’s important to go back to the musical elements in Boheme’s “Carmen,” elements that worked wonderfully.
Maestro Pucciatti’s orchestra was excellent. The conductor’s tempi were perfect. The majesty, wit, pageantry, drive, and fervor of Bizet’s score came through clearly and exhilaratingly. No matter where the characters stood, Bolshoi, Turay, and company did credit to their arias. Bolshoi’s “Habanera” was both light and playful. Turay sang with conviction. Koroneos didn’t seem to know what to do with Escamillio — He seemed like an extra — but Jason Duika, when allows, brought the toreador front and center with his famous anthem. Erin Rosales was especially expressive and vocally on point as Mercédès.
Zachary Angus followed through on his auspicious beginning throughout his performance as Moralès.
Something the principals can learn from Long and Angus is how to read spoken dialogue as an actor instead of a narrator.
No specific set designer is listed, but except for Lilias Pastia’s inn, this “Carmen” offered little sense of specific place. Koroneos obviously opted for fluidity of movement. Anthony Remer’s costumes suggested well the dress of the early Franco era, when Boheme’s Carmen is set.
“Carmen” has no further performances. Boheme Opera NJ returns next season with Giuseppe Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.”
For more information on Boheme Opera, visit www.bohemeopera.org.
