A perfect pre-Valentine's Day opera - lust, (some) romance, and then death. Perfect.
For some unknown and disgusting reason, almost the entire balcony level was filled with rotten horrible nasty tweenagers, some seemingly speaking in French during intermission. I am always very amused when people bring kids to Carmen. But what a perfect lesson for young girls: don't break up with your psycho border-line abusive boyfriend, or he may rape you and then stab you to death! At least these kids were old enough to know to shut up when the lights went down. But they made for a nasty kid-filled intermission. Shout-out to my least favorite nasty person who works at the restaurant, who told me that dinner during Friday's intermission was unavailable because "Parsifal is really long, you know." Thank you Captain Obvious. I wonder how many people will be up for dessert after seeing 6,000 gallons of blood slosh around for an hour...
I always find Act I of Carmen a bit of a waste of time. Sure, the most famous music for Carmen happens, but we also have to put up with the Children's chorus. As seen previously, Anita Rachvelishvili may not have the rockstar body of (former) Trebs, but she brings the sexy. The slutty washing of the legs was very effective, and she has that old-school presence that so few others have. Don Jose was a very cute Nikolai Schukoff, but he didn't have the wild abandon in his voice that Don Jose requires. I mean not that Carmen is verisimo Italian, but I think that is Jose's temperament Cutie boy Nikolai certainly had the looks and the acting down, and his lower singing was delicious and secure, but his high notes always felt a bit held back, not quite loud enough, and not sung with enough confidence to be believable.
Act II improved much more, all the minor characters seeming much more fun than usual. The two girlfriends, a mezzo and a soprano, are usually a scary contralto and a horribly chirpy coloratura soprano - this time: normal mezzo and luscious lyric soprano. Dwayne Croft proved how much hair does - in the black toreador wig I would have guessed he was 25. Also, costume designers take note (especially whoever put the pants on Polenzani in L'Elisir) - Toreador pants make any behind look good - please use always! I felt he kind of got the short end of the stick at the applause at the end - while nothing about his singing was spectacular, he got all the notes and acted well, which is more than most in this role.
Then, finally, Act III, where most of the good stuff happens, opened with the silly ballet interpretation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but did the Ballerino have a tramp stamp? The Card Scene was magic, with R___ using the most delicious chest voice. My gosh, when she wants to be she is LOUD. My only quibble is that her higher notes seem like too much of a stretch - they are there, but sometimes she doesn't quite get to them, and while they are perfectly loud enough, they are several decibels below all her other notes. Maybe she's still too young and will fill them in over time, let's hope so! But her chest is magnificently dark and smoky, and she looked very torn up about the cards. In fact, this is the first Carmen who seems to actually feel anything other than lust in the first half, and being a total bitch in the second half.
Hei-Kyung Hong came out and sang a near-perfect aria that was really quite something special. For some reason I thought it was supposed to be a debuting Russian soprano, so I spent the whole opera wondering why Micaela looked so Asian, but it all came together at the end when I figured it out. Why Ms. Hong isn't singing every lyric role as the lead is beyond belief. She looks as though she could be 25, she has a spectacularly in shape body, and she has the fresh young voice that most Met Sopranos would have killed for even 10 years ago. And she was my first Met Mimi and Violetta, so she always holds a special place in my heart. But she was really quite wonderful.
In what I view as the most important 20 seconds for the tenor in the whole opera, near the end of act III where Jose is pissed and saying he'll never leave Carmen, Nikolai transformed from his slightly wimpy former self without high notes to a demonic angry tenor. His "Desinee!" was spot-on and rang near-perfect.
The final act went well, the parade takes too much time and, again, there are children. While up until now, while good, the opera had never quite had that special spark. The final scene caught fire though, with Rachvelishvili turning on her stage magic presence to overdrive and Nikolai fully transformed into a complete nutjob. He pulled a Jonas Kaufman and went the full forcible-rape route, which was perfectly violent to match Rachvelishvili 's intensity. I'm surprised that the crazy train on the Carmen dress keeps coming back, because poor girl has to devote probably 50% of her brain power into not tripping on the stupid thing. There were some close calls... The stabbing of the stage a couple inches from her head was adequately shocking, with audible gasping from old people in Orchestra. The dropping of the ring was spoken with perfect disgust, and while, obviously, Nikolai didn't actually stab Rachvelishvili at the end, I think he probably punched her HARD in the stomach, because she made a god-awful whimper and cried out in pain. Nobody does "Carmen adoree" as well as Kaufman or, like Kaufman does, in one delicious breath, but Nikolai gave his all and pulled it off credibly.
Nikolai didn't quite get the love he deserved at curtain calls - maybe his not-so-loud high notes didn't go over too well in other parts of the house? Not nearly enough seemed to realize that Rachvelishvili may be the best overall Carmen of this decade (sorry Olga, you owned the last decade but Rachvelishvili brings the sexy smolder that you never quite could). No love for Dwayne Croft, which was totally unfair. Lots of love for the conductor, Michele Mariotti, who was shockingly young and cute. Overall, totally worth going back for. I wonder where Rachvelishvili will take her voice next. I think a Delilah might be quite mezzoey delicious and her temperament might just be perfect for it.
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