Carmen<\/em><\/strong> was the first opera I knew and loved, before its tunes became too familiar and the eager young self dismissed it as unsophisticated. Last night, in the Zeffirelli production first staged at the Met in 1996, I began to rediscover its musical as well as dramatic intelligence. My memory of Don Jose, formed upon the Migenes-Domingo film version<\/a> many years ago, before I could read its English subtitles, had been as the hot-blooded paramour Carmen ultimately loved just as much. But Bizet\u2019s opera offers no such certainty: Don Jose seems all but marginal to the tale, in fact, albeit constantly pushing himself back into it, sacrificing everything for the centrality in Carmen\u2019s life he will never have\u2014precisely because he has sacrificed and thereby compromised his role\u2014whereas Escamillo the toreador (superbly sung by Ildar Abdrazakov<\/a>!) is all role and no compromise. Mistaking a life in shambles for persistence of love, Don Jose can assert his existence only through the decisive act of murder\u2014a childish pointing of the finger, a tantrum that could not go the extra step of sublimation. Carmen does prize freedom above all, not from men but to love, even as audiences might wish to believe she sings against her own heart\u2014that somehow this time it’s different, that we\u2019re wiser to her emotions than she can be. Love is easy, she sings: as soon as you think you\u2019ve lost it, there it is again. This openness\u2014radically vital and for her vitally sustainable\u2014is a serious stance, as haunting as Isolde\u2019s monomaniacal steadfastness, and puts the audience to shame for daring less.<\/p>\n