I bought this Carmen because the idea of an opera in the round seemed too fascinating to miss. How wrong I was. Yes, the concept was cool, but the staging director seemed to be more enamored with the space than with the story, which lead to uninspired blocking of what really isn't all that cool a performance space. While there were a lot of choreography scenes, these too were very mediocre, not the least because the camera doesn't know what to focus on. The flamenco scene in Act 4 was expertly performed and fascinating...and brought what little drama there was to a screeching halt! Again, the camera shortcoming applies, and the "cantor" was beyond irritating. Now to the cast. With the exception of Dancairo, it's amazing that from the leads to the chorus, the women are outstanding while the men are a joke! Maria Ewing is vocally rough most of the time, and her facial expressions are extreme, but at least she built a character, which is more than I can say about Jaque Trussel as Don Jose. He has a very nice voice with a ringing top, but he doesn't do anything with it. His Don Jose is agonizingly bland, and when we tries to turn on the heat and intensity, it seems so forced and unnatural that it is almost laughable. Speaking of laughable, how about Alain Fondary as Escamillo? It's not that he looks like Mr. Clean on a diet of twinkies that upsets me, I kind of dug the whole "sugar daddy" approach, it's that he had absolutely no charisma, so essential to the part. He was almost as bland as Trussel, and had a poor sense of rhythm to boot! He even screwed up the Toreador song! Miriam Gauci was a very sweet and honest Micaela. It wasn't a fierce or big portrayal like one might see in an opera house, but it was just very simple and homest, which made her aria particulary attention grabbing. I'm sure Remandado would have been better had his mic been on most of the time. Of course I could say that about most of the cast. Men's chorus: sloppy. Women's chorus: exquisite. I couldn't even hear the children's chorus, even though it was obvious they were screaming their lungs out. All in all, the main travesty that this Carmen committed is that it was boring, which is hard to accomplish with Carmen, but they did it. Everything from blocking, to costumes, to lighting (except the third act), to choreography was dull and uninspired. The Met had better choreography to the Act II Gypsy song. So get that DVD, or Covent Garden, or the Domingo movie. Any of those would be preferable to this one. Avoid at all costs!
