The very first opera that I saw performed live was Georges Bizet's masterpiece Carmen so it will always be one of my very favorites. I was, therefore, understandably intrigued when I heard the announcement that Utah Opera would be performing La tragedie de Carmen by Peter Brooks to close out the 2020-2021 season. This is a pared down version of the classic (there are only four singing roles and no chorus) that is much more intimate with a particular emphasis on fate. I procured a highly coveted ticket (seating is limited to 30 percent capacity to accommodate social distancing) to last night's performance and I was thrilled to be back at Capitol Theatre. Unfortunately, the director, Omer Ben Seadia, chose to change the setting from Spain in 1820 to Spanish Harlem in the present day and Don Jose is a police officer instead of a soldier, Carmen appears to be a cross between a prostitute and an exotic dancer rather than a factory worker, and Escamillo is a famous singer instead of a bullfighter. Micaela (Julia Gershkoff) travels from a small town to the city in search of her betrothed Don Jose (Isaac Hurtado) and, while he has fond memories of his hometown, he seems to reject her. He and his commanding officer Zuniga (Brandon Bell) are called to a commotion on the street and find Carmen (Kristin Chavez) singing about the fickle nature of love. Zuniga insists that Jose arrest her but she tries to convince him to let her go by promising to dance for him. Jose is beguiled by her and lets her go, which gets him demoted, then meets her at a club owned by Lillas Pastia (Daniel O'Hearn), who may or may not be Carmen's pimp (he is a sleazeball wearing a red track suit and gold chains). Carmen dances seductively for Jose but becomes enraged when he says he must go back to work. When Zuniga comes looking for him, Jose kills him in a fight while Carmen becomes enamored with Escamillo (Efrain Solis) when she hears him singing at the club about a bull fight. Jose is jealous when Escamillo invites her to his next performance and challenges him but Carmen intervenes and Jose declares his love for her. They begin a relationship but when Carmen's husband Garcia (Brnadon Bell) appears, Jose kills him. After a tarot card reading that predicts her death, Carmen leaves him to meet Escamillo at the stage door of his performance at Madison Square Garden. When Jose finds her there, she knows that he is desperate and has nothing to lose but she refuses to submit to him. Jose embraces her in a long goodbye, with Fate (Edith Grossman) looking on, before stabbing her to death. I am not a fan of altering the source material for artistic purposes so I didn't really care for the changes made to the story or to the characters. I was also really confused by the staging. While I did like the projections on a scrim at the back of the stage (a chamber orchestra performed on stage behind this scrim), I had a hard time figuring out what was happening with two large panels, especially when the characters would write on them. However, the beautiful music more than made up for these complaints and the four leads sang their roles brilliantly. I especially loved Gershkoff's aria "Parle-moi de ma mere," Chavez's rendition of the habanera, and Solis' performance of the famous "Toreador Song." Even though this production was a bit of a miss for me, I was still so happy to be in an audience listening to beautiful music performed live by a talented cast. There are a very limited number of tickets available to the two remaining performances (go here).
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