Bad night at the opera as Met puts on disastrous Carmen

It was a bad night at the office for Polish tenor, Piotr Beczala. On 5 January 2024, a date that will live in opera infamy, singing the role of Don José in Bizet’s Carmen at New York’s Met, the talented tenor’s voice suddenly quavered. Then in Act IV gave out completely. Either no word of his indisposition had reached the Met authorities, or Beczala was encouraged to soldier on regardless after the interval. Neither explanation reflects well on the professionalism of the Met.

Chatter on the Met network suggests another possibility. That having been signed-off ill for previous performances he had to appear to ensure he was paid. As singers’ contracts include an extensive rehearsal commitment, losing all the fees was a big deal. Beczala was determined to head to the stage no matter what. 

Poor Piotr was obviously off form from the start. He has a formidable voice and acting talent. Neither was in evidence. He was holding back on his high register and made little dramatic impact in Don José’s first Act I encounter with Carmen. Instead of falling hopelessly in love, the doomed lover was awkwardly treading on glass.

His opening aria with Micaëla (soprano Angel Blue), the naïve girlfriend sent from out of town by his mum with a note that he should marry her, had given no hint of trouble to come. The aria is sweetly lyrical. No real test of the voice. But all his more highly charged exchanges with Carmen lacked punch. Why?

In Acts II and III we found out. Beczala was having an ‘off’ night. Every singer does. But in Act IV the wheels fell off the tenor’s wagon. His voice cracked, and under pressure his high register disappeared completely, leaving gaping holes in the music. The closing scene, the murder of Carmen – in this production executed with a whacking baseball bat – was a cringeworthy disaster. Beczala gargled. The high, long ‘men’ syllable in ‘Carmen’ in the tragic, dying moments of the performance was missing in action. 

The Met audience is polite and affected not to notice. But, at curtain call Beczala briefly gestured to his throat as he took his bow. He had obviously been struck by some lurgy. But why he was allowed to go onstage at all, let alone persist into Act IV when he was self-evidently suffering and incapable of carrying a line, is a mystery. 

Who at the Met was responsible for this fiasco? Opera houses have two solutions to meet the not-unheard-of contingency of an out-of-form principal singer – even mid-performance. The sight of Peter Gelb, the Met’s General Manager, emerging from the curtain pre-performance, the bearer of unwelcome cast change news, is relatively common. 

Why do conductors tolerate this sort of nonsense? Did Daniele Rustioni, baton-wielder on the night, not think to have a word with Beczala during the interval, or one of the scene-changing ‘brief pauses’? In the highly unionised world of the Met that would probably have caused mayhem. 

Bring on the understudy. Or, have the part sung from the wings with the off-voice unfortunate continuing to act onstage, remaining schtum. Don’t put the star singer in the role of a Mission Impossible Tom Cruise. Inevitably, they will self-destruct in five seconds. 

Cancellitis in opera is as common as Covid. Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé was once said by a trade wag “to be available for a limited number of cancellations”. German-Austrian tenor Jonas Kaufman is famous for pulling sickies. Kaufman is, not unreasonably, leery of damaging his voice. 

What are audiences interested in? Watching a star croaking embarrassingly onstage or having the chance to enjoy their skills over a protracted career? I vote for Kaufman caution – and refunds if there is a no show for solo performances. 

This outbreak of tenoritis apart, how good was the Met’s new Carrie Cracknell production of Carmen? She is an English theatre director with only one other opera on her scorecard, a kitchen sink Wozzeck (Alban Berg) at English National Opera in 2013.

No Cracknell bulls**t at the Met! In fact, no bulls at all. Which is odd for an opera one of whose pivotal characters is Escamillo, the bullfighter with whom Carmen falls in love, whose most memorable tune is Escamillo’s Act II entrance aria, ‘Toreador’, ever so slightly bull related; in which the testosterone of the bullfight fuels the Escamillo/Carmen romance and where the conclusion – Carmen’s murder – plays out against the backdrop of a bullring. The vapid vibe of Cracknell’s alternative, a cheerleader ra-ra-rodeo didn’t cut it. 

And, what with the libretto banging on about risk, threats of the rodeo rider being speared on horns and the eventual dispatch of the main animal protagonist, thanks to Ms Cracknell all US-tainted rodeos now risk being consigned to the woke animal rights bucket of history. Ah! They shoot horses, do they?

Carmen also has a lot to do with an out-of-fashion cigarette factory. Those saucy girls seducing soldiers, who roll the fags – perhaps on their thighs; no, that’s Cuban cigars – and much smoking. Carmen is a Philip Morris sponsorship dream.  

Let’s face it, Bizet’s Carmen is total, full-on bull; lives at risk; elegant sweep-you-off-your-feet Spanish costumes, clacking castanets; and lighting up a Tabacalera at the slightest excuse. The passion of conflict mingled with romance, fizzing with sexual tension. That’s why it scandalised the Paris audience at its 1875 Paris Opera Comique premiere. Strip the opera of these elements and it is Carmen no more.

Incidentally, Carmen’s cigarette factory in Seville, the Royal Tobacco Factory in Calle San Fernando soldiered on until 1997. It was still churning out the dark tobacco, pungent fags that would probably have eventually done for ciggy-puffing Carmen if Don José hadn’t intervened, with traditional knife or that Cracknell baseball bat.

The factory is now part of the library of the University of Seville. A savvier director might have based her updated, modern, meaningful version of Bizet’s shocker there. If Cracknell had only asked me to help with the narrative!

Carmen is head librarian, falling in love with the janitor Don José, but dumping him for the glamorous post-grad student, Escamillo, a bad boy who never returned his library books on time and needed a right good telling off. 

She is censured by the authorities for letting students away with their fines and flees with Don José to a COP conference in Glasgow to escape retribution. Dubai wouldn’t work. There are no pub confrontations, essential to the Bizet plot. Has to hark back to Glasgow.

The original, legendary Lillas Pastia tavern would be The Saracen Head, in Gallowgate, scene of generations of wee hauf and a hauf (small whisky and half a pint of pale ale) fuelled fisty conflicts.

Don José finishes her off by batting Carmen over the head with a copy of Greta Thunberg’s No One is Too Small to Make a Difference (Spanish translation), not a baseball bat. Better to be battered by the book than have to read it.

But I wasn’t asked. So, what did Cracknell actually deliver in her modern, meaningful production? 

Visually, a mess. An industrial warehouse – loading bays 24, 25 and 26, the female chorus mostly behind a razor wire fence, emerging through plastic slats at break time. The soldiers were security guards. 

The public – in Seville it made sense for them to be milling round a cigarette factory in the city centre – had decided to schlep to the suburbs to hang out at what looked like an Amazon dispatch facility but was meant to be an arms factory. Why? The female chorus of workers was puzzlingly clad in unattractive pink scrubs. 

Ominously, a large green truck faced the audience. A humungous twelve-wheeler. Later, it would straddle the stage, appearing to race along, wheels spinning, but with background strip lights inexplicably flashing vertically instead of horizontally, failing to give any real impression of speed.

The lights at the bottom did flash horizontally, creating some illusion of movement, but lighting designer, Guy Hoare, seemed to have run out of wires, budget, or enthusiasm halfway up the truck. 

Audiences are not allowed the romance of Spanish gypsies anymore. Apparently, the term is derogatory. So, instead we had gun-toting survivors from an Isis insurrection, bowling alongside the lorry in the back of beat-up flatbed trucks pursued by Escamillo in his incongruous, snazzy, red Jaguar XKR soft top. 

When the truck pulled up its trailer morphed into a mobile Lille Pastias. Sacrilege. Lille Pastias is a tavern steeped in history, memorialised in one of the opera’s famous arias. Not a pop-up burger bar on a trunk road lay-by. 

Having reached the bandits’/drug runners’/arm dealers’ (take your pick) lair in the mountains the truck has now overturned, performing slow, pointless pirouettes on the Met’s stage turntable. There were real flames, doused with some difficulty. Deo gratias that Cracknell had not been told the stage also moves up and down, or we might have had Carmen in ascensio.

The whirligig stunt added nothing but distraction and chaos. Principals had to keep walking or step off the turntable to avoid being snatched into oblivion backstage. The chorus came and went with the rotation of the truck, making their delivery uneven.

Act IV saw more of the pirouetting thing. This time, the audience at the rodeo seated on a stand. The libretto makes it clear that the critical final scene places Don José and Carmen outside the bullring, the sound of the bullfight within shielded from view, for a critical dramatic purpose. 

The unseen brutality of the fatal bullfight is about to be mirrored by the horribly visual slaying of Carmen. Acceptable violent ritual in the ring lauded as spectacle, contrasted against a terrifying crime of passion on the street.

As the chorus turned yet again on the rodeo stand, whimsical extras – cheerleaders – performed a mock bull fight to entertain the crowd. Fabric horns and a matador’s cape flashed briefly. What for? Having beaten the history out of the plot why bother with this brief homage to the original? 

I would love to know what thought processes drove the Met to commission this Cracknell travesty. I have nothing against modern settings of traditional operas. The Met’s Las Vegas 2012 setting for Rigoletto by Michael Myers was a huge success. Myers updated but did not rewrite Verdi’s masterpiece. 

It’s not as if Cracknell is an acknowledged opera director. Here is her version of how she secured her commission. 

“I then came to New York to make a piece of theater at the Public with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge, Sea Wall/A Life, which transferred to Broadway. The morning after the opening night on Broadway, I came to Lincoln Center to meet with the team, and Peter Gelb asked me to direct Carmen.”

Rather superficial. Was this Carmen commissioned on a whim, because Cracknell is conveniently politically correct, with Broadway connections? I checked the Met website for tonight’s performance and the house was 60 per cent full. Woke ain’t working.

Carmen was Aigul Akhmetshina, a competent Russian mezzo-soprano, but a strangely passionless Carmen. I guess she had Latin passion directed out of her. Certainly, her duet with Don José, when she dumps him, seated on adjacent gas (petrol) pumps was not an ideal setting for a fiery bust up.

Angel Blue, an American soprano, was Micaëla. She was superbly sensitive and as her exchanges with Don José are poignant rather than heated, these duets were the jewel of this performance. Beczala’s indisposition was not a factor. 

Escamillo, Kyle Ketelsen, a competent bass-baritone from Iowa who performs internationally as well as being a Met regular, was an excellent Escamillo, but denied the flair and arrogance that characterises the role. 

Daniele Rustioni, an Italian sought-after conductor with a glittering opera-house strewn resumé delivered the musical passion the onstage action lacked. This was a Carmen to listen to rather than watch.

A fellow operagoer, seated to my left, was uber-fashionably but unseasonably turned out in a summer deep tan suit, a snazzy brown and white newsboy houndstooth cap, sporting restrained earrings. He fell victim to the Reaction opera critic interval investigation. This was his first Carmen.

I remarked on a bouquet of red roses under his seat. If he planned to throw them at Carmen, in the same manner as she tosses a bouquet at Don José to hook his affections in Act I, was it altogether wise to have booked a seat in the first row of the Dress Circle? Maybe he was a pitcher for the New York Yankees.

Turned out he was there to see his friend debuting on the Met stage as a supernumerary – making up the crowd, but not part of the chorus. SuperN was the target for the post-performance bouquet. SuperN was pointed out, a snazzily kitted out extra in a yellow coat and hat, observed keenly by Tan Suit through opera glasses during the performance. And I had thought he was gawking at Carmen. 

Tan Suit liked the production, because it was “modern”. He seemed crestfallen when I pointed out that the significant bull-ring setting was missing in action. 

Cracknell has given a long self-justifying interview, most of which I couldn’t fathom, on the Met’s website. If I tried to parse the detail, I would lose the will to live. But for readers trying to ditch a Nytol habit, here is a link. The director, in her own words, is revealingly vacuous. 

Lauded as “Fearless; Daring; Unconventional” by the Met’s PR blurb hacks, she may be. But none of these headlined virtues imply Cracknell has the necessary skills to deliver a Carmen for our era. She doesn’t. A worthy successor to Richard Eyre, Franco Zeffirelli, and Peter Hall, with acclaimed stagings at the Met in 2009,1996 and1986, she is not. 

Duff production. Busted tenor. Not good enough.

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