A Carmen Without the Drama

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Bizet’s Carmen is an opera seething with emotion, drama, and theatricality, but it was only in the last two acts that these potent elements were fully realized at UC Davis’ production on Sunday at the Mondavi Center, which featured principals from the San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows. The first half of the work seemed more like a tenuous dress rehearsal.

Mezzo-soprano Kendall Gladen brought her voice of umber beauty and quiet dignity to the role of Carmen. Her interpretation was not the usual hip-swinging Gypsy but rather a more thoughtful, introspective one. Her entrance aria, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (Love is a rebellious bird), took flight on easy wings, and her “Les tringles des sistres tintaient” (The sistrum jangle with a metallic ring) was delivered free of tension. But it was only in her final scenes of confrontation with her jilted lover, Don José, that Gladen unleashed her full vocal powers to reach dramatic depth. Her final duet, “Porquoi t’occuper encore” (Why do you want a heart no longer yours?), was riveting.

Her counterpart, tenor Noah Stewart, likewise delivered a Don José of quiet desperation, rather than the more familiar boasting young soldier. His earlier duet with his kindly girlfriend, Micaëla, about his mother (”Ma mère, je la vois!”), was dutifully delivered, and his flower song (”La fleur que tu m’avais jetée”) sounded more judicious than passionate. But his threats and arguments with Carmen and the other gypsies in their mountain hideaway brought forth a deeper vocal potency. Stewart’s final scene and murder of Carmen were the dramatic highpoints of the evening.

These fine young singers were not always well-supported, however. Director Isabel Milenski did not fill her stage space well, and her awkward blocking caused many scenes between the lovers to lose tension and power. Carmen was asked to squat and sprawl soon after her first entrance, which robbed her character of its necessary command, and later Milenski had Carmen sing her fateful card-reading aria while standing and stooping. And because of Lynne Giovanetti’s equally weak costuming, Don José appeared in contemporary-looking battle fatigues, while Carmen was too often dressed in heels and what appeared to be afternoon cocktail attire, even shouldering a purse in her final scene.

Soprano Rhoslyn Jones’ vocal and dramatic efforts as Micaëla were also compromised by an ill-fitting and inappropriate dress. Yet she sang a powerful “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante” (I say that nothing daunts me) in her final scene, her voice strong, translucent, and compelling.

A Powerfully Sung Toreador

Baritone Jeremy Galyon enlivened the stage with his Toreador song (”Toréador, en garde!”), inviting the watchful Carmen to join him at the bullring. Galyon is a powerful singer, his voice always fully focused and controlled, and he has given telling performances as Nick Shadow (in Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress) and Leporello (in Mozart’s Don Giovanni), among others. But he needed stronger direction here, and he too fell victim to the stage director’s clumsy staging.

The various gypsy friends of Carmen likewise tried to assert their characters as best they could. Tenor Matthew O’Neill (another accomplished singer) sang El Remendado, Eugene Chan did double duty as Moralès and El Dancaïro, and Ji Young Yang and Katherine Tier were both frisky if unfocused accomplices, while UC student Paul Corujo was a shady Moralès.

Some 80 members of the UC Davis Chorus sang Bizet’s many rhythmic passages strongly and well, under the direction of Fawzi Haimor, but they too suffered from poor stage decisions. Milenski had them arranged behind an upstage scrim (sometimes in place, sometimes not) as if a ghostly presence, but then they were sometimes lighted, sometimes not. Members of the Pacific Boychoir sang sweetly and stood shyly by as the street urchins.

The opera’s growing tension was considerably slackened, however, by its spoken dialogue, which was delivered in slow, studied French. Although this production used the opera’s original version, it should have jettisoned the idea, just as it abandoned the use of scenery in this mostly acted concert version.

Maestro D. Kern Holoman conducted well and his orchestra often sounded sonorous and delivered Bizet’s rhythms incisively. Yet many of the lovely passages for accompanying horn, and later for solo flute with harp, struggled for contour and shape. Still, the production was an important first step in what the university campus hopes will become an ongoing collaboration with San Francisco Opera. Judging by its effusive applause, the mostly student audience seemed grateful for even this vestige of the score’s dramatic impact.

James Keolker is a frequent writer and lecturer on opera, as well as a professor of opera studies at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of the award-winning book Last Acts: The Operas of Puccini and His Italian Contemporaries.