Francesca Zambello’s 2006 Covent Garden Carmen rehashed once again by San Francisco Opera. This time with French mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux in the title role.
In 2017 alone Mme. Hubeaux transformed herself from Thibaud in Don Carlo at the Paris Opera into Eboli at the Lyon Opera where she was lauded (by me) for the easy energy she exuded from her wheelchair (it was a weird concept). Since then she has exploded into Amneris at the Salzburg Festival, Eboli in Vienna, Hamlet’s mother at the Paris Opera, where upcoming is Fricka in Das Reingold. Not to mention Carmen in the Calixto Bieito production (high concept) of the Vienna State Opera, upcoming is Carmen in the Dimitri Tcherniakov production at Brussel’s La Monnaie echoing his 2017 Aix Festival production (very high concept).
Mme. Hubeaux (lead photo) did not fare so well in Mme. Zambello’s wannabe slick, music hall concept production that pulled every trick in the book to make Bizet’s brutal, game changing opera into a slight, easy going, bloodless entertainment (talk about weird concepts). Though there were embellishments this time around. Significantly Micaela did not shower streamers and confetti from above onto the dead Carmen and distraught Jose in the opera’s final moments.
La Hubeaux did bring an easy energy to her Carmen, particularly vocally. She is a fine singer, endowed with a rich voice that she uses with great intelligence. It was a well sung, vocally nuanced Carmen. It however did not find, and could not have found the femme fatale allure that enraptured Jose, nor capture the ferocity of Carmen’s spirit of independence, nor feel her sense of doom or her sense of the senselessness of her life. Perhaps these attributes can be spelled out more easily in successful concept productions.
It remained a well sung exposition of the Carmen monuments.
Carmen’s anthesis, Micaela, was sung by British soprano Louise Alder. A performer of great poise, she wore Micaela’s blue dress, bathed in Act III’s blue light with knowing aplomb. She possesses a sizable lyric voice that explodes with thrilling overtones in its upper registers. Mme. Alder relied on a well-founded Mozartian artistry (Vienna, Munich, Glyndebourne) to create a Micaela abounding in musical and vocal subtleties, her third act “Je dis” enthralling us with its perfection, belying the innocence and simplicity of its intention.
American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn created a monumental Escamillo. Of powerful voice embodied in a huge persona (a signature role is the Hoffman villains). He made his Act II entrance on a real horse — one hand firmly attached to the saddle horn — and summarily blew us away with his Toreador Song. In Act III his larger-than-life stature and presence became a bit of a problem when he gamely attempted a knife fight with Jose. No one got hurt.
Carmen’s enflamed lover Jose was enacted by American tenor of Chilean descent Jonathan Tetelmann (lead photo). Aspiring to assume tenorissimo stature Mr. Tetelmann well embodied Bizet’s Jose physically as well as vocally, the young Andalusian needing both delicate sensitivity as well as grandiose passion. Tetelmann relished sailing up to his high notes in powerful tenor sound, beautifully intoning at the end his final shouts of grief, yet finding the control of voice to pull back from the climactic fortes of his Act II Flower Song to heartfelt, pathetic softer tones. The Tetelmann Jose approached that of a total performance in this evening of purely singerly performances.
The smaller roles were undertaken by current and former Merola and Adler Fellows to varying degrees of effectiveness.
The Zambello production was staged by Anna Maria Bruzzese, an Italian choreographer and stage director. Added — if I am not mistaken — to the SFO 2019 edition was a complex Act I changing of the guard enacted solely by Sevillian street urchins, here the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. It got a bit scary, musically, but it was staging virtuosity indeed. Added also was the ballet executed at the opening of the Act II during the Frasquita/Mercedes/Carmen trio, flashily executed, à la grand opera balletic protocol [Carmen is an opéra comique], by the nine dancers of the San Francisco Opera Ballet.
Though Mme. Bruzzese eschewed restoring the Act I chickens and dogs from the original Covent Garden production she overplayed the live horse trick by having Escamillo lead the horse, Carmen now mounted, to the Act IV bull ring, surely a very tired horse.
The conductor was Houston Opera protegé Benjamin Manis who established a quite firm, super fast, beat for the overture gracefully effected by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, then oversaw a leaden Act I. The dancers kept up with the fast music that opens Act II, the maestro then gave Escamillo ample rein for his blockbuster aria. The Act III flute/harp/clarinet idyll was rushed, and perfunctory, though the maestro indulged the exquisite perfection of Micaela’s blockbuster aria. The Act IV chorus and procession was at breakneck speed.
The excellent lighting was effected by Justin A. Partier.
Michael Milenski
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, California, November 19, 2024. All photos copyright Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera