The Met’s Carmen is ‘bland, lethargic’

Zachary 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