Passion play Delayed staging of Bizet’s Carmen proves well worth the wait By: Holly Harris Posted: 5:36 PM CDT Monday, Apr. 15, 2024

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This article was published 15/04/2024 (733 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Opera unleashed a firestorm of love and lust Saturday night as it presented its first production of Bizet’s Carmen since April 2010.

Originally slated for 2020, the production was abruptly cancelled mid-rehearsals as COVID-19 raged on. Several of the artists in this season-closing performance were set to appear four years ago, helping bring a sense of closure to that difficult time in which so many shows were unceremoniously scrapped.

However, its latest iteration — performed in French (with English surtitles), originally designed for Edmonton Opera and stage directed by Brian Deedrick — proved well worth the wait, featuring a galaxy of Canada’s finest opera stars.

The three-performance run, which wraps up on Friday, is dedicated to the memory of Winnipeg-born artist and Royal Swedish Opera artistic director Michael Cavanagh, whose untimely death last month sent shockwaves around the world.

The production is long, running 31/4 hours (billed as 21/2), including one intermission and two brief pauses allowing for set changes; the first half alone clocks in at 105 minutes. Carmen also comes with a trigger warning for those who may be affected by domestic abuse or intimate partner violence.

Set in Seville, Spain, Bizet’s eternally popular opera comique, based on a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, tells the tale of opera’s favourite femme fatale, Carmen, a Roma woman who falls deeply in love with officer Don José, before being swept off her feet by handsome toreador Escamillo.

The four-act work stunned audiences during its 1875 première in Paris with the slaying of its lead character — even for opera, unthinkable at that time.

In this version, set in the 1930s, Italian-born American mezzo-soprano Ginger Costa-Jackson marks an auspicious MO debut in the title role. She smoulders like embers in a bonfire, her smoky vocals creating a flesh-and-blood protagonist dead set on controlling her own destiny.

The charismatic Metropolitan Opera star’s volatile, highly visceral portrayal — in which she knocks over chairs, strikes at her lovers and belts out her iconic arias, including the famous Act I Habanera, L’amour est un oiseau rebelle — enthralls, as does her sizzling Seguidilla, Près des remparts de Séville, driven by her own clacking castanets.

At times, her fever pitch proves too much of a good thing, teetering on rage over passion. Her character shows greater vulnerability during acts III and IV as she becomes aware of her impending demise, allowing us to feel greater empathy for this ill-fated wildcat. We need to see more Carmencita than Carmen.

The always-wonderful Canadian lyric tenor David Pomeroy — who has been performing Don José for 20 years, including here in 2010 — embarks on an emotional trajectory that takes him from dutiful corporal to obsessive lover prepared to kill for his desires.

His “big aria,” Act II’s Flower Song, La fleur que tu m’avais jetée, does not disappoint, with the compelling singer’s lyrical phrasing, pleasing vibrato and resonant voice enough to send anyone into a swoon.

It’s been far too long since we’ve seen Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch grace this stage; he last enthralled audiences in the title role of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 2018. Okulitch’s larger-than-life presence as macho bullfighter Escamillo oozes with sexy swagger.

Winnipeg-based soprano Lara Ciekiewicz creates a pitch-perfect Micaëla, Don José’s long-suffering “country girl” who serves as counterpoint to the seductive charms of Carmen. The singer-actress brings a rainbow of emotional colours to her carefully nuanced role, with her shimmering, impeccably controlled voice showcased during Act II’s Je dis que rien, sung with limpid sentiment as she discovers Jose hiding in the mountains with Carmen and her band of smugglers.

Other principal roles include baritone Johnathon Kirby in the dual characters Moralès/Le Dancaire; bass-baritone Giles Tomkins as lieutenant Zuniga; and Carmen’s confidantes, Winnipeg-born lyric colouratura soprano Lara Secord-Haid as Frasquita and mezzo-soprano Barbara King as Mercedes. The latter two also deliver an ominous Mêlons! – Coupons!, in which Carmen’s fate is revealed through their tarot cards.

Deedrick’s keen attention to detail within a greater overall vision makes this opera sing. Individual acts are foreshadowed by principal characters hidden behind a scrim, often showered by falling rose petals, suggesting streaming blood from a bull — or heroine.

The show also includes effective touches of stage business, such as Carmen tempestuously biting into an apple (hello, Eve) in Act I, before hurling pieces of fruit at the soldiers. Pure magic is created when the chorus of slinky cigarette factory girls first emerge from their toils in a puff of stage smoke in Act I.

MO principal conductor Tyrone Paterson skilfully leads the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra through Bizet’s flashy score, its iconic themes as razor sharp as a picador’s lance.

The production features effective lighting by Hugh Conacher (though the smugglers’ den is too dimly lit), Spanish-flavoured choreography by Brenda Gorlick and fight direction by Jacqueline Loewen.

Multi-tiered sets designed by Camellia Koo become the cigarette factory, tavern, den and bullring, in which the Manitoba Opera Chorus (Tadeusz Biernacki, chorus director) and a particularly zesty Children’s Chorus (Carolyn Boyes, chorus master) perch to cheer Escamillo’s killing of the bull as Carmen’s own life slips away outside.

A weird proscenium arch framing the stage area is unnecessary and arguably cheapens the show’s otherwise strong production values. Another oddity is Carmen’s costume at the end; in her pedestrian white dress, she blends in with the crowd, rather than standing out as she would have insisted upon.

As expected, the sold-out crowd leapt to its feet at the conclusion, with opera’s quintessential feisty, fascinating and self-empowered heroine’s own cry of defiance — “Free she was born, free she will die” — still ringing like a clarion call.

holly.harris@shaw.ca