White Horse Can't Save WNO's Staid Carmen

Carmen is a typical femme fatale: a woman who brings misfortune to the man who falls in love with her. She is also wild, untamable and somewhat mad. A contemporary stage director always faces a dilemma of how to present all of Carmen's traits to the new audiences without making her look stereotypical or ridiculous. Then there is the question of wether to stage the opera in its traditional setting or transport it to a different time and place. For the Washington National Opera's 2022 season gala, art director Francesca Zambello opted for the safer traditional route, reviving her 2006 production, first shown at the Royal Opera House in 2006. 

The problem with reviving a well-known production, which can be seen in its entirety online, is that it inevitably invites unfair comparisons. The ROH performance is almost impossible to match as was painfully obvious from the get-go in Saturday's WNO performance. 

The singer portraying the passionate gypsy has to exude sensuality while trying to avoid the exaggerated hip-swiveling or overtly sexual gestures that could put off a contemporary viewer.  Few are able to achieve that and it seems that Zambello went for one of currently best known and most popular American mezzo-sopranos, Isabel Leonard. An accomplished singer with a beautiful voice, Leonard has been an excellent interpreter of the roles that suit her, such as Nico Muhly's Marnie, reportedly written with her in mind. But it is hard to understand why anyone would want to cast the beauty known for her cool and polished demeanor in the role of a bedraggled gypsy, who washes her legs in a bucket at a town square.  Of course, a brilliant actress can pull it off, but for Leonard it seemed like too big a stretch.

Isabel Leonard in role debut as Carmen at the Kennedy Center,  photo by Scott Suchman

The acclaimed mezzo was wise to leave off the exaggerated come-hither gestures that could make her more funny than sexy. But if she had not informed Don José that she was dancing for him, no one would know she was dancing.  Her gypsy was more of a petulant child than an independent woman, holding on to her freedom. There was no dark, brooding quality to the prediction of her own imminent death. 

Lenard's voice is versatile, but does not reach deep enough into the Kennedy Center's cavernous Opera House. (This was evident a few years ago when she sang Rossini's Cinderella at the same venue). Even for a patron sitting mid-parterre it was at times hard to discern what she was singing, which makes one wonder how much could be heard in the last row.

To make matters worse, her sound did not blend well with tenor Michael Fabiano's. He sang Don José in a powerful voice that filled the house. One could further question the chemistry, or a lack thereof, between the two protagonists, but if we assume that Don José was manipulated, rather than loved, the tenor who portrays him has more freedom in approaching the role.  Some artists choose to play an ardent lover who gradually becomes embittered and finally crazed. Fabiano's José seemed to harbor a dark side to his character from the start. There was more anger than tenderness in his pivotal aria "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée."  By the closing scene he was a raving maniac, but since his interpretation lacked a development from a naive lover to the madman, it was hard to sympathize with his ultimate pain. 

Ryan Speedo Green's Escamillo lacked the electricity and sparkle surrounding a celebrity bullfighter. The real-life horse he rode onto the stage did not help. Despite Green's robust bas-baritone and adequate singing, once he got off the horse, he acted more as a priest than a heartthrob.

As José's fiancée Micaëla, Vanessa Vasquez impressed with her beautiful voice, but not with acting.

Evan Rogister led the orchestra with aplomb, including the gorgeous prelude to Act III, that starts with a lovely flute tune and expands to other woodwind. But Rogister did not exert the same control over the chorus, whose members were not always in sync.

For some pizzazz in the otherwise unexceptional production, Zambello added a cloud of smoke coming out of the cigarette factory, suggesting a fire in Carmen's workplace. In addition to the afore-mentioned horse, whose two brief entrances created significant excitement in the audience, a Spanish Easter-procession float passed by the bullfighting arena before the fatal encounter between Carmen and Don José in the last act. 

Overall, Saturday's gala performance of Carmen seemed like a successful final exam of a college drama class, in which all the students did well and got an A. But the Washington opera has to do better than that. If the company opts to go the traditional route, it must find the interpreters who will give the old production a new life, and keep in thrall even the people who have seen Carmen many, many times. If the right artists for a traditional Carmen are not available, the production should be changed to suit the ones that are. 

In 2018, ROH's premiered a new production of Carmen that was nothing short of revolutionary.  The title character stepped onto the stage out of a female gorilla suit, in short hair and androgynous clothes. She was neither sexy nor seductive. One could describe her as playful; she even winked at the audience after her staged death. The set consisted of a huge black staircase, with masked characters, dressed in black and white, dancing up and down the steps. The dialogues were replaced by voiceover narration. The minimalist production was more akin to a Broadway musical than a 19th-century opera and not to everyone's taste, but it attracted young audiences and amused the older ones, tired of seeing more of the same.

Michael Fabian and Isabel Leonard as Don José and Carmen, photo by Scott Suchman

Post-Covid Washington may be less receptive to radical innovations in a beloved operatic piece.  The audience responded warmly to the unimaginative staging and interpretations, at least during the gala evening, which created its own excitement.  

In an effort to bring people back to live performances, opera companies worldwide offer packages that are most likely to please their patrons and keep them entertained. If it takes bringing a white horse to the stage, so be it. But ultimately, only excellence and creativity will keep the genre alive. 

WNO's Carmen runs at the Kennedy Center Opera House through May 28. 

Cinderella And Other Fairy Tales

After more than 300 years the story of Cinderella continues to captivate, whether presented in a movie, opera, ballet or some other form.  Let me be quick to clarify that Cindy is not my favorite fairy tale character.  That honor goes to the princess who kissed a frog and turned him into a prince.  I have kissed a number of frogs in my life and none of them has turned into a prince, but I keep trying. However, I never miss a performance of Cinderella and always discover a new layer to the story.   

Maxim Mironov and Isabel Leonard in WNO's production of Rossini's opera Cinderella.

The other day I was passing by Kramerbooks store at Dupont Circle and noticed in the window a selection of children's storybooks. One was titled Everyone Poops and another The Gas We Pass: The story of Farts. Wow! They did not have those where I grew up. My first reading list comprised Grimm's, Anderson's and Perrault's fairy tales from which I advanced to Aesop and international folk stories.  In my teens I went through a period of obsession with the romanticized stories of the Wild West by Karl May and Zane Grey before graduating to the great classics.

Although I don't often see Perrault's tales in the children's sections of the dwindling number of the area's bookstores, I assume there must be an interest in them, judging by the number of kids at the Saturday premiere of WNO's Cinderella.

The production seems to be targeting young audiences and those young at heart. The colors and the design are over-the-top, screeching and at times ridiculous. But one can imagine a kid building a set like that from lego pieces, with costumes cut out from neon-colored paper. Note for example the prince's blue-and-white patterned shoes. Fussy but simple and geometric at the same time, like everything else in the show. The acting also was exaggerated and clearly meant to make you laugh even in the sad and tender moments. You could not take this Cinderella too seriously, at least not initially. It took time getting used to, but once I got "into it" it became great fun. The first really hilarious schtick was the arrival of the false prince on a white horse. I don't know if it's the same in other cultures, but in mine "the prince on a white horse" is the synonym for every woman's romantic dream of a man. Maxim Mironov's Don Ramiro was absolutely delightful. He looked like a confused young man with no experience with women. I imagine my son was like that on his first date. Isabel Leonard was not as charismatic for me in real life as she was in the Met broadcasts, but she sang beautifully.   The portrayers of the mean stepfather and his daughters, Dandini and other characters were all skilled entertainers both in terms of singing and acting, eliciting outbursts of spontaneous hilarity, with the exception of Shenyang whose Alidoro I thought was too serious for this production.

WNO's Cinderella, the Proposal Scene

Despite the emphasis on the comic, I found more depth in this production of Cinderella than I did in the Met's version a few years ago. Maybe it was the mismatch between the statuesque Elina Garanča at the time and her short and portly prince, maybe it was all the kitsch and confection in the more traditional production - but despite superb singing I never noticed then as I did this time that Angelina, aka Cinderella, was craving family. The playbill notes focus on her forgiveness and magnanimity, but to me she seemed more like a lonely woman who wanted to come to her prince from a home and a family.  Rossini's Cinderella wanted to bring an identity to her marriage, not just assume the husband's.   Even an unloving stepfather and two malicious step-sisters were better than no kin at all.

The not-quite-so-happy ending is a mixture of funny and serious like many other things in this production.  Angelina emerges from her reverie with a broom in her hand, a harsh reality that awaits many a young woman today when she wakes up.  Teenage girls might prefer the standard happy ending in Kenneth Branagh's new movie version of Cinderella. I appreciate that the British star director gave a new dimension to the wicked stepmother, portrayed aptly by Cate Blanchett. In this movie, she is a beautiful and elegant woman whose beloved husband died, forcing her to remarry. She is disappointed to learn that she is not as well loved by the second husband and it hurts even more to find herself impoverished after his death. She is still evil, but more human and easier to understand than a stereotypical fairy-tale stepmother. Branagh's Cinderella, on the other hand, is a girl with a cause, or at least a motto, not just a dreamer. But she is only a half-baked activist as if the director could not quite decide how much to intervene in the classic fairy tale. The sets in the movie are exceedingly Disney-like and gaudy, complete with a pumpkin turning into a carriage, lizards into footmen, glass shoes and tons of tulle. One expected more creativity from a Kenneth Branagh.

Opera in the Outfield

The Washington National Opera has chosen a formula which worked successfully last year with The Magic Flute free-for-all in the  Nationals baseball park.  Various operatic characters walked into the outfield to mingle with the audience and engage the kids.  The production including Jun Kaneko's playful costumes was a hit with the area families.  This year, you can expect Cinderella's mice  (or are they rats?) to greet you on arrival.

It is clear that such a vision of Rossini's opera does not agree with the music critic I saw run out of the theater as soon as the curtain hit the floor. I knew what to expect in her review the next day and she did not disappoint: a slew of poisoned arrows rained from Mount Olympus. But there are many who applaud WNO's Francesca Zambello for bringing approachable opera to the backyard of many families who would never see it otherwise.  The classic fairy tales presented in the way kids can understand teach them to dream of a world in which the good always wins and the evil is punished, something that stories about bodily functions do not.