Carmen Sizzles, But Romantic Chemistry Fizzles

A live performance of even the fieriest tale of romance and betrayal can fizzle if the two lead actors share no chemistry.

It is an axiom made flesh by Dominique Serrand’s production of Georges Bizet’s operatic masterpiece “Carmen,” which finished its five-week run at the Loeb Drama Center on Saturday.

“Carmen” follows the ill-fated attraction between its titular heroine, a tempestuous femme fatale, and Don José, the Spanish corporal who uproots his life in order to pursue her. Don José forsakes his post—as well his engagement to his childhood sweetheart Micaëla—in order to follow Carmen and her entourage of Gypsies from Seville into the mountains.

Christina Baldwin’s dynamic portrayal of Carmen made it easy to see how one woman could drive a man to such impetuosity. Sensual and confident, Baldwin imbued Carmen with a magnetism that was as irresistible to the spectator as it was to the men on stage.

But why such an enchantress would fall for Bradley Greenwald’s lackluster Don José remains a mystery. Greenwald carried himself with a stiffness that impeded his ability to bring passion to the libretto. Lyrics like “You only had to appear / Only to toss a glance towards me / In order to take hold of all my being” beg for fervor; Greenwald’s delivery was disappointingly lukewarm. Lacking romanticism, Greenwald’s Don José still might have made for a plausible target of Carmen’s attraction, if he had a raw machismo about him. This was not the case.

The acting at cross-purposes made it difficult to subscribe to the drama that develops between their characters in the opera’s second half. Don José is called from the mountains to care for his dying mother in Act III, and Carmen—outraged and hysterical after being abandoned—turns to the arms of Escamillo, a famed bullfighter. When Don José learns of this affair, he is thrown into a jealous madness that comes to a head in the opera’s tragic final scene.

The last acts of “Carmen” have the potential for gut-wrenching intensity. Without a credible foundation for Carmen and Don José’s attraction, this production was unable to reach those emotional heights.

Still, the scenes that belonged to Baldwin alone were charged with excitement, owing much to her versatile voice. Baldwin, a mezzo-soprano, brought her voice to the extremes of sweet delicacy and gnarly roughness in order to capture Carmen’s allure. Similarly impressive were the vocal talents of Jennifer Baldwin Peden (real-life sister of Christina), who played Micaëla. With her dulcet soprano, Peden gave Micaëla’s introspective moments a rich and beautiful sadness.

Interestingly, Dominique Serrand chose to direct “Carmen” in part because it had leading roles for these three particular performers. In the playbill he explains, “I wanted to stage a piece specifically for the group of singers I work with, and I wanted it to be about passion. And so came ‘Carmen’: a grand opera… a gorgeous drama.”

Serrand’s production demonstrates the benefits and the disadvantages of pre-casting. “Carmen” gave the floor to a trio of strong voices, but these voices were not necessarily the right fit for the opera’s characters. Case in point: although Greenwald performed a tenor role, he is in fact a baritone. Pre-casting may have also accounted for the imperfect chemistry between Baldwin’s Carmen and Greenwald’s Don José.

Stylistically, Serrand’s “Carmen” shirked traditional grandeur in favor of minimalism. One set piece—a grey building wall—was used to convey the city of Seville as well as the Spanish countryside. Scenery changes were marked by new costumes and shifts in the lighting scheme. Additionally, Greenwald adapted Bizet’s rich orchestral score for a mere two pianos. Remarkably, his transposition thinned the texture of Bizet’s score without sacrificing any of its vibrancy.

With a pared-down set and sound, Serrand’s “Carmen” was forced to rely on the merits of its performers, who did not always uphold the opera’s vigor. Yet at the same time, simplicity gave the production a refreshing ambiguity. Stylistically belonging to no discernible place or time, this production has reinvented “Carmen” as a modern-day romance rather than as a classical masterpiece.