Opera review<\/h2>\n
\u201cCarmen,\u201d Georges Bizet\u2019s 1875 opera, can be a good first opera for novices. It\u2019s a gripping story about vivid characters; it\u2019s longish but not taxingly \u2014 about 210 minutes with intermissions (call it getting your money\u2019s worth). And the brilliant music is ear-hooking; no matter how new you are to opera, I promise you\u2019ll recognize at least two or three of the tunes.<\/p>\n
So is Seattle Opera\u2019s 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 \u201cCarmen\u201d) 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\u2019s rendition, a revival of his 2019 production, makes the climax all the more powerfully brutal.<\/p>\n
Act I is all about comedy: Small-town girl Mica\u0451la (Kathleen O\u2019Mara) arrives looking for her sweetheart, soldier Don Jos\u00e9 (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\u2019Nai 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 \u2014 for example Mica\u0451la\u2019s exasperation at not being able to keep Jos\u00e9\u2019s mind off his mom back home.<\/p>\n
Act II is set in a nightclub, and Curran\u2019s genius idea is to have Carmen sing her rousing \u201cDanse boh\u00e8me\u201d 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 \u2014 think MGM in the \u201950s \u2014 in Curran\u2019s very dancy stylization (he\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 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 \u201cCarmen\u201d becomes a very different show, and for the heroine and the man obsessed with her, it\u2019s all downhill from here.<\/p>\n
A deserter, Jos\u00e9 now has no choice but to join Carmen and her smuggler pals. In Act III, Mica\u0451la confronts them all at their hideout, with O\u2019Mara playing her now much less girlish than in Act I, older and wiser, with a bit more heft to her soprano \u2014 and her aria here earned Sunday\u2019s most enthusiastic applause. Toreador Escamillo shows up, too, to claim Carmen, who chooses him over the needy and increasingly unhinged Jos\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bizet\u2019s theatrical coup in Act IV contrasts, with bitter irony, Escamillo\u2019s offstage triumph in the bullring and Jos\u00e9\u2019s last desperate attempt to persuade Carmen \u2014 and this is where the wide emotional arc pays off. In this production, Jos\u00e9 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s score.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Opera review \u201cCarmen,\u201d Georges Bizet\u2019s 1875 opera, can be a good first opera for novices. It\u2019s a gripping story about vivid characters; it\u2019s longish but not taxingly \u2014 about 210 minutes with intermissions (call it getting your money\u2019s worth). And the brilliant music is ear-hooking; no matter how new you are to opera, I promise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2402914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741],"class_list":["post-2402913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Seattle-Operas-\u2018Carmen-heightens-the-comedy-and-the-tragedy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2402915,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402913\/revisions\/2402915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2402914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}