Arts & Events

On Friday evening, May 27, SF Opera opened its summer season with a new production of Bizet’s immensely popular opera Carmen. This Carmen was directed by the daring and controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito, dubbed “the bad-boy of opera,” in his U.S. opera debut. This production, which premiered in Catalonia back in 1999 and has been performed on several continents since, is here staged by Bieito’s longtime collaborator, Joan Anton Rechi. A San Francisco Opera press release noted that “this production contains violence, nudity and suggestive behavior. Parent discretion advised.”

Well, let’s see about that. There was no nudity I detected on opening night, although Carmen, played in exquisitely sultry fashion by mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, at one point hiked up her skirt and removed her panties before mounting a supine but fully clothed Don José. On the other hand, there was considerable violence, usually inflicted by men, (especially the Spanish soldiers of the Gaurdia Civil), against women, although some violence was directed against men, as in the savage beating of Lieutenant Zuniga, Don José’s superior officer, by Carmen’s gypsy men in Act II. Ultimately, what struck me as most controversial about this pro-vocative production was its initial premise, which situates the drama, at least in the opening two acts, in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.  

In terms of time and space, director Calixto Bieito says he wanted to situate the opera at a Spanish colonial crossroads of Europe and Africa during the mid-20^th-century Franco regime in Spain. In this I think Bieito missed a promising oppor-tunity. Although this production contained anachronisms that looked forward to the present, such as smart phones used to photograph selfies and flat-screen TVs as contraband trafficked by Carmen’s Gypsy friends, these anachronisms did not belong in the Franco era but were very much part of our contemporary global culture. If Bieito wanted to set this opera, or at least its first two acts, in the colonial enclave of Ceuta, he would have been much better off situating it temporally in the ongoing 21^st century present. 

Ceuta is a 7-mile-square urban enclave on the North African coast totally enclosed by barbed wire and electrified fences to keep out the hundreds of black Africans who flee Mali, Niger, Burkina Fasso, Senegal, and Gambia, among other African countries, in hopes of gaining entry to Europe. On reading that Bieito staged his Carmen in Ceuta, I hoped the opening curtain would reveal a colonial enclave entirely enclosed by a barbed-wire fence, with hundreds (or at least dozens) of black African young men, poorly clothed, gathered outside the fence, desperately seeking entry into Europe, even climbing the fence in their efforts. This is the reality of Ceuta today. This staging would have been a dramatic introduction to our contemporary reality, and it would have been highly suggestive regarding other plot developments in the story of Bizet’s Carmen. 

For example, if Bieito had staged the opening scenes of Carmen to include Carmen’s male Gypsy friends, El Dancairo and El Remendado, circulating insidiously among the black Africans striving to get inside the barbed–wire enclave of Ceuta and accepting money from them, this would suggest that the contraband Carmen’s Gypsy friends ran included human trafficking. This, after all, is an all too abrasive reality of the North African coast. Likewise, if in Act II of this production of Carmen the Gypsy band’s retreat into the nearby mountains featured their contraband as black Africans instead of equally anachronistic flat-screen TVs, this would have been a powerful indictment of our contemporary emigration onslaught on Europe and of the people-smugglers who profit from this onslaught. What I’m getting at is that the choice of Ceuta, a Spanish colonial enclave on the North African coast of Morocco, as the site of Bieito’s Carmen, immediately suggested to me extremely dramatic possi-bilities that might have enormously enriched our appreciation of the contemporary relevance of Bizet’s Carmen. 

Alas. Bieito entirely muffed this opportunity. Instead of the barbed-wire fence I imagined as the opening scene, Bieito gave us a bare stage with only a phone booth and a flagpole. At one point, Carmen, shortly after entering, entered the phone booth and seemed to carry on a conversation we never heard. As Carmen, mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts acted superbly and sang quite well but without much individual coloration in her vocal delivery. As for the flagpole, in this production the soldiers of Spain’s Guardia Civil ran up the Spanish flag. (Incidentally, Spain’s Guardia Civil, as I noted when travelling in Spain during the Franco regime, was almost an occupying armed force. Spain’s Guardia Civil, like Italy’s Carabinieri, is or was a para-military federal police force that ran roadblocks on all major highways and demanded identification papers from everyone seeking to pass.) The presence of this para-military armed force is really the only manifestation in Bieito’s staging of Carmen that suggests the oppressive militarization of Franco’s Spain. Moreover, given that Franco is now long dead and his fascist regime largely discredited, this allusion to the Franco era seems all too weak given the contemporary situation in Spain, which might have effectively been suggested in setting the drama in Ceuta. Finally, what in the world was intended by the plastic Christmas tree included in the opening scene of Act II? This seemed utterly senseless. 

Turning from the staging of this Carmen to the singing, mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, a Sacramento native, gave a sultry, sexy performance as Carmen, her voice expressing every nuance of Carmen’s seductive arsenal. If she lacked something in vocal power and projection, she made up for it in dramatically effective acting, movement, and suggestive singing. As Don José, tenor Brian Jagde, who was justly applauded here recently as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and Cavaradossi in Tosca, sang effectively but without any particular emotional or vocal coloration in his role as Carmen’s brief lover, soon abandoned by her in a resolute search for her own freedom.  

Perhaps the best singing on opening night of this production was provided by Ellie Dehn as Micaela, the innocent country-girl sent to Don José by his mother. In her Act I appearance, Ellie Dehn’s Micaela was appropriately shy, cautiously intro-ducing the news that Don José’s mother has instructed her to give him a kiss from her. But Ellie Dehn made it clear that Micaela expects (or hopes) for more from this kiss than a peck on the cheek. When Don José gave her only this, she angrily hurled something at him as she exited. Later, in Act III, when Micaela followed Don José into the mountains where he has gone with Carmen and her Gypsy band, Ellie Dehn sang with great passion and a combination of fear and prayer at the obstacles Micaela faced in trying to persuade Don José to desert Carmen and return to his mother (and to Micaela who loves him). When she eventually succeeds in urging Don José to leave with her by telling him his mother is dying, Ellie Dehn’s Micaela brazenly confronted Carmen with a somewhat obscene flick of the hand from the chin gesture expressing her mistaken belief she has defeated her rival.  

Meanwhile, bass-baritone Brad Walker was a convincing Zuniga; tenor Alex Boyer was a creditable El Remendado; baritone Daniel Cilli was a fine El Dancairo; and baritone Edward Nelson ably performed the minor role of Morales. More prominent were the fine performances by Egyptian-born, New Zealand resident, soprano Amina Edris as Frasquita, and Renée Rapier as Mercédès. These two Gypsy women friends of Carmen seemed to play a larger role in Bieito’s production of Carmen than they usually play. Another innovation of Bieito’s production was the introduction of a new character, a barely adolescent young girl performed on opening night by Amalia Abecassis. Though this character doesn’t sing, she features prominently throughout this production, dancing in apparent imitation of Carmen and her Gypsy female maternal-figures early in the opera, and rushing to protect Carmen when she is menaced by her male Gypsy ‘keepers’. Baritone Zachary Nelson as Escamillo, the toreador who seduces Carmen and takes her away from Don José, was a bit weak in this macho role, his voice never rising to the occasion this role demands. 

Instead of Lillas Pastia’s tavern “near the ramparts of Sevilla,” Bietio gave us a vintage 1980s Mercedes Benz in Act II, and a bevy of vintage Benzes in Act III. The singers crowded around these cars, climbing inside them and atop them, carrying out various orgies of thumping and humping with the military Guardia Civil and anyone who happened to come by. Did it work dramatically? At best, only at a stretch. Largely, it seemed yet another opportunity missed. 

Conductor Carlo Montanaro led a briskly paced Carmen, and Chorus Director Ian Robertson contributed fine work from the Opera Chorus. Ultimately, if this production of Carmen failed to live up to its billing as thrillingly provocative, the fault in my opinion was entirely the responsibility of director Calixto Bietio and his revival director Joao Anton Rechi. The singers, chorus, and orchestra all did their part at least adequately, at times admirably. However, the staging was consistently disappointing and perplexing.