September 24, 2005

L'amour et la mort...
by Jeff Langstraat

On Thursday night, a couple friends and I went to see the Theatre de la Jeune Lune's production of Carmen at the American Reperatory Theater in Cambridge. This was my second Jeune Lune opera, the first being their 2003 production of Figaro, in which they turned Mozart's Nozze de Figaro into flashbacks within a play. The characters (Figaro, Susannah, Amalviva....) were all there, but they were reminiscing as the French Revolution was occuring around them. It was a fascinating, and very enjoyable, evening (there was a Cuban dinner first--this time it was Indian). Although, I'm a bit of an opera queen (but not in the obsessive sense), with a bachelor's degree in music (voice), this was the first time I'd been to the opera since seeing Figaro as a last outing with a couple friends before I moved back to Boston from Minnesota.

The grand opera was stripped down--and it worked! The stage was sparse: a large stone-brick facade with a balcony, a couple windows, a ladder, and a door. A slightly raised (and seemingly carpeted) rectangle took up much of the center stage, and benches on either side of the stage. That's it. Likewise, the orchestra was two pianos. In the program notes, Bradley Greenwald, who both adapted the score and sang the role of Don José (more on that below), wrote:

As we were developing our production, the energy of the music seemed to interrupt a gentle, spoken scene, And so we truste that when the spoken word elides into the sung word, the melody becomes a natural extension of the music in the language. "Je te revois, ô mon village...," without accompaniment, is no longer a scored duet for two compatriots in a foreign land; it is a shared memory expressed through the melody of a folk song; and it has no need to present itself as anything more.

That's not to say we don't hunker down and relese the full-throttle singing that so passionately communicaes this story; but I have yet to know an opera score hich containes more of the dynamic ppp (extremely soft, pianississimo) than Carmen. This call for intimacy in a score known more for its brilliant musical colrs was reason alone to trust a chamber interpretation....

Relying solely upon the sinewy strength of voice and body to create these characters emanded an instrumental parallel. The power one can feel in the presence of a pianist who uses every muscle seemed the right solution for a musical score which requires not just hte robust forte, but also a complete control of the piano. And so our chamber (or intimate) Carmen has two fine pianists creating the landscape of sound. I have scored one piano to complement the gentleness of Micaëla and the latent, flawed passion of José; the other the chromatic strength of Carmen and the suave rhythm of Examillo. Together and apart, these four hands orchestrate their own duets with a palpable amount of concentrated, full-bodied energy--the mrror of the four characters on the stage.

This emphasis on the body is a cental part of the production. There are few props to rely on, so the body becomes more of a prop. Evocation rather than representation. This use of the body and its motion alongside the dual piano "orchestration" (and some very effective lighting strategies) intensified the intimacy of the opera. That emphasis on intimacy tranformed the opera into a more personal drama. The relationships stood out more than they usually do. It was very effective.

Christina Baldwin (that's her to the right) created a complex, conflicted, and powerful Carmen. Of course, she is passionate and sexual. She uses that as survival skill, weapon, and facade. Underneath the bravado is a wounded person who can't turn her emotions on and off at will, as her persona might suggest. That facade is rarely punctured, but the conflict between passion presented and passion felt is evident. Beautifully sung, Baldwin's Carmen is also wonderully acted. A powerful performance.

The object of her passionate abuse is Don JosJosé. A tenor role, it is here performed by baritone Bradley Greenwald. While there was some rewriting and transposition, what made this fit particularly well into this particular production was Greenwald's use of his head voice. Moving into that upper register, using a baritone singing in partial falsetto as opposed to a tenor belting it out, added to the closeness of the performance. It became more internal, more personal, and, again, more intimate. It also made the relationship between JosJosé and Carmen more real. These were two people more than two characters. Carmen's inability to really control her emotions and José's obsession were brought to the fore, the personal tragedies involved in this doomed relationship were intensified. Rather than being lost in the music, you're drawn into the relationship. By the time José stabs Carmen, his descent into passionate madness brought me to tears (and they were tears very different than the ones I have when watching Boheme).

That's not to say the production isn't without it's problems. Micaëla, while sung and acted well by Jennifer Baldwin Peden, felt disjointed. She just seemed to pop up every so often. I don't recall if this is a problem with the original (I need to revisit the opera) or part of TJL's reworking of it. Also, Bill Murray's Escamillo was weak. Maybe I'm used to Jose van Dam's performance of the role, with his seductive bravado and strength. Murray was neither seductive nor strong. Some of this may be due to TJL's tendency to rely on younger singers, Women's voices tend to develop earlier than men's. Murray's voice may develop to where he can really take on this role, but right now he's unable to keep up with the rest of the cast, in power or tone; I really didn't mind that they cut the first verse of the "Toreador" aria (Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre).

Those are relatively minor quibbles, though. It was a highly affecting production. If you're an opera fan, or a fan of interesting and intense theater--and find yourself in the Boston area, it's an evening well spent. Carmen is playing at the ART until October 8.

Posted by in Art, Music, Review
Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) | Technorati Cosmos

Trackbacks

Trackback for this post:
http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/3333

The following blogs make reference to this post :

Say it loud, say it proud!