Ironically, the best singing at last evening's performance of Bizet's Carmen at the Met was that of Hei-Kyung Hong who filled in for the ailing Ekaterina Scherbachenko in the role of Micaela. I thought the rest of the cast, including Ann Rachvelishvili as Carmen and Nikolai Scukoff as Don José, along with Michele Mariotti's conducting, were adequate if not inspired. To be fair, I'm judging against a performance I once saw at the Met in the 1980's when Carreras played Don José and Ramey was perfect as Escamillo.
The truth, though, is that the opera's music is so vibrant and fun that it doesn't take an A-list cast to bring it to life. It's hard to believe now that it received such scathing criticism when it first opened at the Opéra-Comique in 1875. Even fellow composers were hostile:
"The opera's first performance extended to four-and-a-half hours; the final act did not begin until after midnight. Afterwards, Massenet and Saint-Saëns were congratulatory, Gounod less so. According to one account he accused Bizet of plagiarism: 'Georges has robbed me! Take the Spanish airs and mine out of the score and there remains nothing to Bizet's credit but the sauce that masks the fish.'"
One of the tragedies of opera is that Bizet died at only 36 without ever having known what an international success his opera would eventually prove. Shortly before his death, he wrote of Carmen, "I foresee a definite and hopeless flop."
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