The Met’s Carmen is ‘bland, lethargic’
OperaZachary Woolfe in the NY Times gives the Metropolitan Opera’s new Carmen a serious kicking.
‘The bland, lethargic staging, which opened on New Year’s Eve, falls into the pattern of so many of the Met’s updatings: It is, almost gesture for gesture, the same as any extra-stale traditional “Carmen,” just dressed up in cutoff jeans and trucker hats instead of flamenco skirts and castanets.’
‘a staging that lacks passion, wit, depth and variety’.
‘…this “Carmen” reimagines nothing. It seems from her interviews that (Carrie) Cracknell wants to emphasize the broader structures of gender and class that make Carmen’s death a societal tragedy instead of an individual crime of passion. But the director struggles to render that distinction legible to the audience.’
Full review here.
photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
A hard pass.
So sad that many standard repertory operas like Traviata (the current one), Tales of Hoffmann, Lucia–among others–have been trashed under Gelb.
Next season we can look forward to Turandot coming under the chopping block.
The good part is that I am now freer to explore other entertainment venues in New York, so, thank you, Peter.
Worse even are the vocally no-there-there singers (sorry, fashion models) they thrust onstage.
Sorry…a new AIDA is slated for next season (Michael Mayer of RIGOLETTO/TRAVIATA infamy), not TURANDOT.
Peter has been on a mission of revenge since day one. Who hurt you Peter? Perhaps a good therapist could have guided you through this twenty years ago.
Feels like more “edgy” stereotyping of flyover America. Nice.
Btw a few days ago the NYT ran an article by a certain Ms da Fonseca-Wollheim that wasn’t only full of praise for Cracknell’s approach but also claimed that Carmen was about “French colonialist fantasies played out in Andalusia” … Who in the world considers such utter nonsense “fit to print”?
“…wants to emphasize the broader structures of gender and class that make Carmen’s death a societal tragedy instead of an individual crime of passion.”
I’m already bored to death.
At least there are jeans and gender studies – what, no queer studies?
Does anyone still make donations?
Are singers and audiences still expected to attend?
“(Carrie) Cracknell wants to emphasize the broader structures of gender and class that make Carmen’s death a societal tragedy…” This is the central problem in modern art n music. Everything has to be force fed into the central narratives of the woke movement: race, gender, class “injustice”, underrepresentation, power struggle, AD NAUSEAM in order to be relevant, accessible, reimagined, career enhancing that they muck up the inherent great qualities of the work. For chrissakes, just produce great music n let the audience enjoy the bloody work n stop shoving down your political ideology down our throats. We don’t give a s*&t about your injustices.
Carry on then, with your easy life.
That’s the spirit. Many revered opera composers cared deeply about societal wrongs or injustices, as they saw them, rather than sought to assert the status quo, as is evident from the canon—I imagine this was as unpalatable to many in their audiences as “woke” productions might be to traditionalists today.
These revered opera composers did indeed care about society wrongs. But, first of all, they created new works of art. And these works of art endure because they do not fall into the stereotype-du-jour, but tell us something about human condition that still resounds.
Very true. Most so-called ‘traditionalists’ are utterly ignorant of actual history.
it is true that many composers did care about societal wrongs, injustices, but sometimes the work, the music and words therein do a little better job at it on their own than, from the little reading I’ve done, and images I have seen, than of which Ms. Cracknell is capable. Two other things rule out this Carmen for me, and that is the bad recitative, regardless how big a house the Met is, and anymore a usually leathery Piotr Beczala as Jose. This Akhmetshina, well, I have never heard of her. Daniele Rustioni has a real piece of work on his hands, trying to rescue ‘the new Carmen’ at the Met. Seems though he may have backed out of a new Ballo in maschera coming up as well, which is or would be a good decision. The Ballo that opened in 2012, with Fabio Luisi conducting, David Alden doing the staging was an example of a modernist staging that had some vision, some ideas behind it. Hacks like Michael Mayer, Zambello, Barrie Kosky, and then Sir David McVicar with his miserable Fedora last season (McVicar who got fat and lazy at some point, though he had started off quite well).
Did Ms Cracknell pick her costuming for Carmen off the rack at Goodwill Industries or Ross Dress For Less, the cheapest she could find there?
Is that the royal we?
From people who were there who are usually tolerant of Euro staging, they say this just does not work. Gelb has destroyed another opera. They say this one will go down with his ratty couch Tosca.
Was thinking thr same thing. It’s the bondi carmen.
The ‘ratty couch Tosca’, at least as it got much better seen in Munich, is far preferable to this Carmen, from what I read about it. Mattila, Kaufmann, and Uusitalo were all riveting in the Tosca, as staged by Luc Bondy.
The Bavarian State Opera forces backed his concept of the work, whereas the Met half-assed what he wanted.
The really sad thing about such trashy new productions is that they will now be stuck in the repertoire for years – if not decades. When I think
back to the glorious Faggioni/Frigerio production at the 1977 Edinburgh Festival with Berganza making her debut in the title role, I recall that that production did not die after its two outings in consecutive Edinburgh Festivals. It went on later to the Opera Comique and then to La Scala.
Why the Met has so many non-traditional stagings with which it will be lumbered for decades, I wonder yet again how it is possible that Gelb keeps the job for which he was never qualified in the first place. And he has shown he just cannot learn! He and the Board should all be fired.
Bob Tuggle, the late Director of Metropolitan Opera Archives used to talk about the waste and abuse of money bringing these productions out, as unlike their predecessors would be trashed either after the first, or second outing. People used to go to the MET to be awed by the realism of the productions. Paying high ticket prices for stage trash and projections is not what the audience wants. Gelbzabub years ago should have paid for a company to come in and do focus groups to understand what the audience wanted. All these years later, he still doesn’t understand who those people were who actually bought season subscriptions. He lost them quickly and now he relies on the theater of the absurd with the hopes of string them in with bizarre marketing. It’s actually better to listen to a weekly braodcast than to see the merde he throws up on the stage with donor money, as the ticket sales numbers are so bad.
There is probably a much fancier diagnosis (perhaps narcissistic personality disorder), but In plain words, Peter is a know-it-all. With little formal secondary education, to boot. Nothing more. A personal trait my mother warned me against as a child.
A Eurotrash production from a limey with a russkie in the title role, and the best singer out sick?
No, thank you.
Aigul is not russian tho
You are a racist tho
Racist, perhaps, but from Don Ciccio’s comment, definitely a xenophobe. Neither speaks well of him.
I am just against importing trash. I would love to have a British director giving an innovative or at least theatrically valid staging that is nonetheless faithful to Bizet. Same way an inspired conductor can make a score that most of us know well sound fresh again.
Then, there will be those for who this may be their first Carmen or even their first opera.
Do try to learn the difference between race and culture, will you? And, as you grow (if you grow, big if) you will start to appreciate those who say what they think, as opposite to those who smile at you and then they stab you in the back.
Wow Ciccio, calm your teets. It’s okay, it’s just a post on the Internet, no need to get so mad.
It’s actually a way to stand up to the woke mob, which will soon retreat if you simply stand by. They are not that tough.
So the staging isn’t all the great, but shouldn’t there at least one mention of, I don’t know, Carmen herself? Aigul Akhmetshina seems to earning nothing but raves for her Met debut.
Singers have become second-class citizens under Gelb. Directors are the gods…
The junk staging is not her fault.
It’s good to see the NYT Classical Music Desk go to war against each other, the previous day’s sympathetic interview was by long-time contributor Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, the next day’s trashing review was by the chief critic Zachary Woolfe.
In the past, it was an echo chamber, often the same interviewer was also the critic, too few people drinking the same kool-aid.
Today, that’s what opera directors want, right, diversity, equity and inclusion, you have it all in a single department at the NYT.
I’d be interested in reading Fonseca-Wollheim’s own review, obviously the NYT won’t publish it, but she can certainly submit it here!
Today’s directors have no respect for the original author, composer and librettist of the works. Rather than right, diversity and inclusion, the work should be treated by the best singers for each role and staging that even if modern respects the original story and not their bizarre vision of the work. If they want to do their own visions, spend time with living composers operas, so they can get IP approvals.
This is a worthless, ugly-ass production – period. For hipsters only – everybody else can skip it.
I realise budgets may be skimped nowadays but the trend for opera in jeans is getting very boring.
Hahahaha. Budgets skimped?!?! Not in this production. Have you seen the massive semi onstage, the multiple vehicles, huge bleachers, weird large light structure? The photos show all of the above clearly.
This production isn’t costumed the way it is because of budget. Believe me, even Gelb wouldn’t say, “we’re giving you a new production but you have no costume budget.” This was a decision made by a director who has no experience with opera (or the US, for that matter) trying to shoehorn in her own political agenda
Those who can, play. Those who can’t, critique. Of course NL uses every opportunity to bash that same NYT when it suits him
Those who can’t critique, post here on SD ; )
I’m surprised the Met didn’t decide to sell popcorn and cotton candy in the lobby so that patrons could get into the “correct spirit” of the final act.
Would have probably been for $25 a box tho lol
The reality is that the woke-gender-overblown societal wrong agenda is advanced by a small portion of the society. The majority of people don’t believe in those overblown causes. That (quantitative) minority makes very loud noises and creates an illusion of “mass opinion”. Inexplicably the Met takes that illusion for reality and somehow decides that Carmen needs to be about “the broader structures of gender and class that make Carmen’s death a societal tragedy.” The Met ends up shoving down its paying public’s throat something the public doesn’t believe in. It can’t be a successful endeavor regardless of the quality of signing.
The Met us ober and done.
Carmen in “Daisy Dukes” will surely bring the kids in by the multitudes! And save the Met!!
Yet again the Met under Gelb gives a Rolls Royce of a chorus and orchestra to a cyclist. No stage craft, only ideology. I feel sorry for the poor singers, chorus and orchestra.