![\"CarmenAR\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/files\/2009\/12\/CarmenAR.jpg\")
\n[Anita Rachvelishvili before her admirers]<\/p>\n
\n[Anita Rachvelishvili before her admirers]<\/p>\n
\nIf I were to reduce to a single word Anita Rachvelishvili\u2019s La Scala<\/a> debut yesterday<\/a> as Carmen (the HD simulcast of which I saw at Symphony Space<\/a>), it might be \u201csovereignty.\u201d She reigned supreme. This Carmen was the center around which all else could only hope to hold and the sole circumference of her own self. Men in heat fanned themselves and fell aside. Women melted toward her like heliotropes to the sun. During the Habanera<\/em>, elevated atop a mere water trough outside her factory, she was a radiant and pungent Venus, rising out of the blander foam of humanity. That is, even if one would want from the Carmencita of one’s dreams more slithery a seduction dance during the \u201cJe vais danser en votre honneur” bit\u2014done here without castanets, freeing her hands for much skirt-play\u2014than Rachvelishvili’s potently self-possessed rendition.<\/p>\n Too many ideas can spoil an opera, and this may have been the case with Emma Dante\u2019s staging, wherein cloth and fiber figured prominently as the materials of inspiration. Act III opened to a shifting formation of trees played by actors completely cloaked in heavily pleated cloth and topped with thickets of fir\u2014definitely not a bad way to spike a Pleats Please<\/a> runway with a gothic touch, but distracting here as a visual demographic once joined onstage by smugglers and black-veiled, death-messaging wraiths. A translucent white cloth spanning the entire middle of the stage, slowly stretched over Micaela during her first visit to Don Jos\u00e9, made a point well-taken\u2014she in her pale cocoon of love and purity, oblivious that Don Jos\u00e9 is already lost to another\u2014but one felt a bit sorry for Adriana Damato, who had to push her arms about and sing on in that gauze (too like a mosquito net?). Micaela endures another illusionistic gag in Act III when, returning to beg Don Jos\u00e9 to leave his wicked life, a giant pillow and giant billowing bed-sheet (supplied by \u201cinvisible\u201d stage-hands) suddenly render her an apparition of Don Jos\u00e9\u2019s dying mother and no less helpless. Her head and upper torso swimming in this sea of white, the effect had the scale-jolting strangeness of Alice in Wonderland<\/em>\u2014an interesting idea but wasted in this opera. More effective creativity with fiber gave us two long, thick ropes tied to Carmen\u2019s wrists during the Seguidilla<\/em>, each rope hanging from each upper corner of the set. The rope tenses and slackens as she sways and leans, such that the precise position of her incarcerated body, all extremities stretched, understandably makes Don Jos\u00e9 lose his wits at just this moment. All these outstretchings of cloth\u2014including also a brilliantly choreographed bit with banderillos<\/em> spinning in and out of taut swathes of red silk that are by turns banners and cummerbunds\u2014had a way of activating the stage as highly tensile and flexile space.<\/p>\n In addition to some heavy-handed Catholic iconography\u2014e.g., a giant swinging thurible bisecting the upper stage in Act IV, lots of big tilted crosses, and assorted uses of chiaroscuro and vanishing-point symmetries straight out of Dan Brown\u2019s film adaptations (the author was in attendance)\u2014Dante\u2019s staging also offered commentary on the effects of the adult world on children. In the \u201cAvec la garde montante” scene, the children who mimic the soldiers really march about in uniform\u2014a troubling sight. When Don Jos\u00e9 gets out of prison, Carmen welcomes him with an indoor picnic setup that \u201cPapi\u201d Presidente<\/a> might call \u201cthe big bed<\/a>.\u201d Around the edge of this blanket several young girls from the gypsy band sit watching as their default role-model dances her \u201cJe vais danser en votre honneur\u201d aria, at once seducing Don Jos\u00e9 and educating her prepubescent audience.<\/p>\n \n \nThere’s lots to say about the interpretive liberty in the final scene\u2014rape\u2014and the downright bestial band of teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling gypsy women as Dante chose to depict them, but probably not much that hasn’t already<\/a> been said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jonas Kaufmann<\/a> captured Don Jos\u00e9\u2019s earnest ardor as well as desperate infantilism with pathos and a beautiful voice he certainly knows how to sculpt. I\u2019d be especially eager to hear his recording of Schubert Lieder, and to see his Lohengrin<\/em>, which premiered in Munich this summer, as that seems a great role for him. Erwin Schrott<\/a>, not only lovely to look at (as Anna Netrebko knows), made for an irresistible Escamillo\u2014his voice rich and commanding, his expressions and gestures full of heartbreaker antics. Frasquita and Merc\u00e9d\u00e8s were honey-voiced and acted with care by Michele Losier and Adriana Ku\u010derov\u00e1.<\/p>\n Among the peculiarities of the HD presentation is a frontal view of the conductor during the overtures. Barenboim, fidgeting with what did seem a precariously diminutive high-chair, produced some endearingly comical expressions. More importantly, of course, the La Scala orchestra under his leadership made the proceedings musically<\/em> exciting all the way through, too, especially the woodwinds and strings so crucial for this score.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Anita Rachvelishvili before her admirers] If I were to reduce to a single word Anita Rachvelishvili\u2019s La Scala debut yesterday as Carmen (the HD simulcast of which I saw at Symphony Space), it might be \u201csovereignty.\u201d She reigned supreme. This Carmen was the center around which all else could only hope to hold and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[370,4537,39,5832],"tags":[14105,14101,5841,13877,13872,14104,14107,14103,478,14100,3892,14106,14098,14115,14108,14099,14116,14102],"class_list":["post-342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-love","category-music","category-opera","tag-14105","tag-anita-rachvelishvili","tag-barenboim","tag-bizet","tag-carmen","tag-december-7","tag-erwin-schrott","tag-georges-bizet","tag-georgia","tag-georgian","tag-hd","tag-jonas-kaufmann","tag-la-scala","tag-live-broadcast","tag-netrebko","tag-rachvelishvili","tag-simulcast","tag-symphony-space"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"CarmenDJ\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/files\/2009\/12\/CarmenDJ.jpg\")
\n[Jonas Kaufmann as Don Jos\u00e9]<\/p>\n