The cats and I watched the first two acts of the Met production of Carmen that BK liked, and he liked it much more than I did. I liked some of the staging and hated the set. During the Prelude,. at the sinister "Fate" theme, the curtains opened to let us watch two dancers choreograph sex, which I felt was unnecessary, since the opera's about obsession and murder. Then the curtains open on what should be a square in Seville at high noon as the guards chat about the people on the street. Instead, we get the barracks and prison with some soldiers dressing. I liked the business of booking prisoners, but I don't know what folk passing by the soldiers are singing about. The scene change comes with the changing of the guard, and the square in Seville looks like Stonehenge.
Since the cigarette factory is vague, the cigarette girls enter from a cistern in the stage floor rather than stroll down the stairs on their break. The costumes look 1930s, so I guess we're in Franco's Spain.
I was afraid Alagna would look too old at 53 or so for a young mama's boy, but he looked much younger. I liked Garanca's Carmen a lot, anf I liked the director's having her stab Don Jose with the flower rather than throwing it at him, since it mirrors his stabbing her in Act Four.
My other complaint is that in Act Two Don Jose comes on to her too hot and heavy in the duet before Zuniga is tied up and Jose goes from being a young soldier to a smuggler.
One last complaint? The Met still uses the grand opera edition with the Giraud recitatives written after Bizet's death. There's too much valuable info in the original spoken dialogue that gets cut in the recoitatives.
