Seattle Opera’s ‘Carmen’ heightens the comedy and the tragedy | Entertainment

Opera review

“Carmen,” Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera, can be a good first opera for novices. It’s a gripping story about vivid characters; it’s longish but not taxingly — about 210 minutes with intermissions (call it getting your money’s worth). And the brilliant music is ear-hooking; no matter how new you are to opera, I promise you’ll recognize at least two or three of the tunes.

So is Seattle Opera’s staging, which opened Saturday, an ideal production of this gateway opera? Very nearly. The main reason is that never have I seen (this is my fifth Seattle Opera “Carmen”) such a vast emotional journey between the tragic and comedic elements of this story, intensifying both extremes and heightening the contrast. The distance traveled in director Paul Curran’s rendition, a revival of his 2019 production, makes the climax all the more powerfully brutal.

Act I is all about comedy: Small-town girl Micaёla (Kathleen O’Mara) arrives looking for her sweetheart, soldier Don José (Ryan Capozzo in the performance I saw Sunday, double-cast with Matthew Cairns), who soon meets, and is vamped by, cigarette-factory worker Carmen (Tacoma-born J’Nai Bridges, making her Seattle Opera staged-production debut, double-cast with Sasha Cooke). So far, so Gilbert and Sullivan, especially with the perky comic business added — for example Micaёla’s exasperation at not being able to keep José’s mind off his mom back home.

Act II is set in a nightclub, and Curran’s genius idea is to have Carmen sing her rousing “Danse bohème” within the world of the opera, as if she were a chanteuse moonlighting at the club with a cabaret number. This becomes a zingy production number — think MGM in the ’50s — in Curran’s very dancy stylization (he’s credited as both stage director and choreographer). Then toreador Escamillo arrives to take the mic, his strutting swagger likably underplayed, for a change, by Benjamin Taylor (double-cast with Christian Pursell).

José has followed Carmen there, and this is where the mood turns: She sings him a seductive tune, but then he hears from an offstage trumpet his regimental fanfares, and, stricken with guilt, Cpl. Wonder Bread has to get back to base. Carmen is not happy. In fact, I can pinpoint the musical moment when the comedy starts to darken: the scornful edge she brings to her vocal mockery of the trumpet call. In a few minutes, this “Carmen” becomes a very different show, and for the heroine and the man obsessed with her, it’s all downhill from here.

A deserter, José now has no choice but to join Carmen and her smuggler pals. In Act III, Micaёla confronts them all at their hideout, with O’Mara playing her now much less girlish than in Act I, older and wiser, with a bit more heft to her soprano — and her aria here earned Sunday’s most enthusiastic applause. Toreador Escamillo shows up, too, to claim Carmen, who chooses him over the needy and increasingly unhinged José. 

Bizet’s theatrical coup in Act IV contrasts, with bitter irony, Escamillo’s offstage triumph in the bullring and José’s last desperate attempt to persuade Carmen — and this is where the wide emotional arc pays off. In this production, José has sunk dramatically, from Boy Scout to Sweeney Todd, and in these harrowing final moments Capozzo is truly stunning by any acting standard you might apply, his tenor having gained resonance, plangency and depth throughout the performance. Whereas Carmen, as the rich-voiced Bridges plays her, has defiantly always been herself from the first bar: mercurial, sure, but a rock in her self-possession.

Set/costume designer Gary McCann keeps Carmen in eye-catching red throughout; he and Bridges conspire to ensure you never miss her even among his expansive sets or Curran’s cinematic spectacle. Also a thrill is the return of former Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot at the podium, wringing every drop of sunshine and anguish from Bizet’s score.