Victoria Vargas (seated on bar) and Cast

What did not satisfy, however, was the connection between characters to provide meaning and purpose to all the beautiful music. Carmen is rife with obsessive passion, impulsiveness, and treachery. A soldier, Don Jose, falls hopelessly in love with Carmen, a tempestuous Gypsy who uses her allure to draw what she wants from men before abandoning them. Carmen appears to have genuine feelings for Don Jose and insists he prove his love by abandoning his military post and flee with her and her band of smugglers to the mountains. He does, only to have Carmen soon tire of him, shifting her attention to Escamillo, a dashing and arrogant bullfighter. Don Jose is visited by Micaëla, a woman from his hometown who has long suffered over her love for him. Micaëla entreats Don Jose to go to his mother, who is dying. He goes, but vows to return and claim Carmen as his own. When he does return, Carmen attempts to make a final break with him but Don Jose is crazed with passion and cannot let Carmen go.

With all the vows of love and passionate declarations, it would be fair to expect some sparks between the characters, but none were in evidence at the performance I attended. Carmen, as played by Victoria Vargas, had the requisite confidence and scornful demeanor, but never conveyed anything resembling love, or even sexual interest, in the men held in her sway. That she desired them, and that they appeared to be trapped in her designs was simply a function of the libretto; there was no evidence of these passionate feelings beyond the fact that the words and music delivered them to us. Similarly, Don Jose, as played by Cooper Nolan, appeared to be obsessed with his obsession (the dark side of being in love with love), fanning his desperate resolve to win Carmen back as a matter of pride and honor, but not displaying any actual ardor for the woman. Certainly, nothing resembling tenderness passed between them.

The bullfighter Escamillo (Richard Ollarsaba) at least made no pretense of seeing his desire for Carmen as anything more than a conquest, like many before and many yet to come. Micaëla (Shannon Prickett) came closest to expressing real emotion in her yearning for Don Jose, hopelessly wishing she could draw him back from the spell Carmen had cast upon him. Still, while Ms. Prickett conveyed true depth of feeling, with the object of those feelings consumed by the demons of obsessive love, we began to pity rather than admire her for the purity of her love.

This was the 6th production of Carmen the Minnesota Opera has mounted over its four decades. This time around, the plot was still set in Seville, but moved temporally to the 1970s and the fall of the Franco dictatorship. Jessica Jahn's creative costumes mirrored the '70s, and the choreography in act two drew on moves from the days of disco. The sets designed by Erhard Rom offered atmospheric spaces for the story to unfold in. A towering central core of what appeared to be corrugated cement served as the cigarette factory where Carmen works in act one, broke apart to become jagged mountain spires in act three, and formed the bullfight arena for the concluding act four. It stood in telling contrast to the more traditional Spanish architecture with which it shared the stage.

According to program notes, the time shift was intended to place the free-spirited Carmen at a time in history of great social change, with hopes for new democratic governments, openness toward sexuality, and an embrace of human rights. After decades of dictatorship, Spanish society was reinventing itself. Carmen's friends Frasquita and Mercédès (brightly performed by Siena Forest and Bergen Baker, respectively) displayed this liberated behavior, but they were in the background. In the forefront were three characters—Don Jose, Escamillo and Micaëla—who seemed unaffected by the changes afoot, and at the center, Carmen, if anything, epitomized the risks of taking the new freedoms to excess.

As the opera began, cast members strolled singly or in small groups, creating a natural sense of life moving in and out of a hectic town square full of vendors, gossips, lecherous men, factory girls, soldiers, and school children. Unfortunately, after this opening, the crowd became a single unit, racing out when the narrative called for two characters to have a scene alone, racing back in when the crowd is needed to provide choral amplitude to the feelings expressed by the principals. The lack of naturalism in the movement of the crowd added to the sense of every emotion being staged, rather than authentically felt.

Fortunately, the cast members all have beautiful voices, and accompanied by the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, provided a wonderfully gratifying musical evening. If only the narrative thrust and emotional payload matched the gorgeous sound, what a treasured evening that Carmen would be!

Carmen played nine performances from April 25 to May 10, 2015, at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington Street, Saint Paul, MN. For more on Minnesota Opera, visit www.mnopera.org.

Music: Georges Bizet Libretto: Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy; Stage Director: Michael Cavanagh; Conductor: Aaron Breid; Choreographer: Heidi Spesard-Noble; Set Designer: Erhard Rom; Costume Designer: Jessica Jahn: Lighting Designer: Mark McCullogh; Wig and Make-Up Design: Jason Allen; Chorus Master: Robert Ainsley; Children's Chorus Master: Dale Kruse; Fight Choreographer: Tom Ringberg; Assistant Director: Alison Moritz; Assistant Conductor: Aaron Breid: Repetiteurs: Jonathan Brandani and Geoffrey Loff; Production Stage Manager: Kerry Masek; English Translations: Floyd Anderson

Cast: Bergen Baker (Mercédès), Brad Benoit (Le Remendado), Rafael Davila (Don José*), Gerard Michael D'Emilio (Moralès), Siena Forest (Frasquita), Ben Johnson (Lillas Pastia), Kyle Ketelsen (Escamillo*) Cooper Nolan (Don José**), Richard Ollarsaba (Escamillo**), Shannon Prickett (Micaëla**), Marita K. Sølberg (Micaëla*), Nora Sourouzian (Carmen *), Victoria Vargas (Carmen**).

Photo: Photo: Michal Daniel

- Arthur Dorman

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