KATE ALDRICH
The American mezzo-soprano (debut) has portrayed Carmen with eight major companies, among them the Metropolitan Opera, Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and San Francisco Opera.
When I was younger many people said, “Carmen is going to be your big role.” It’s flattering to hear that, but I don’t think I was a shoo-in as a Carmen when I started out. It’s not necessarily as much a vocal role as an acting role — acting with the voice as well. I was thrilled to be offered it at a time when I was looking to do it any chance I could.
I think it was written for someone who would be comfortable with low and high but very comfortable in the middle, with a “speaky” quality in the voice, so you can bring out nuances in the text. The more physical I can be onstage as Carmen, the better. She’s a very tactile, very physical person, needing physical reactions — sexually, sensually, with violence, dancing, food. She wants instant gratification.
Carmen in Mérimée’s novel [on which the opera is based] is different from the way she’s interpreted now. She’s a small, slight person, an animal, with a lot of quick movement. Maybe she suffered various forms of abuse, which would have made her strong and given her a will to survive. I think she learned early on that sensuality is power. Maybe she wasn’t physically strong like a man, she didn’t have wealth and money, but she had this one thing: her fascination.
It’s essential that we like her — she has to be the most sympathetic character in the opera! When she dies and the audience applauds, something’s wrong. It’s sad that this happens to a woman who is saying, “This is who I am, this is what I want, this is who I always will be.” She never tries to be something she isn’t. Everyone sort of secretly wishes they could live the way Carmen does.
YONGHOON LEE
The Korean tenor (debut) has portrayed Don José at Netherlands Opera, Glyndebourne (in the house and on tour), the Berlin Staatsoper, and the Hamburg Staatsoper.
I’m a “full lyric” tenor, and the role is fantastic for me. It does feel as if it’s written for two different voices. In the beginning he’s like a boy, “A letter from my mom” and so on — light and lyrical and beautiful. Then, of course, the role gets bigger and heavier as it goes along.
He’s really not a bad guy, but he has a dark side; he’s in love, but he can’t control his lover. He can be very rough, but he also has sweetness and gentleness. That’s why I love doing the role — because Don José has all the different colors in his personality. He’s a very moody person inside, and after he meets Carmen, he becomes almost like her stalker, especially in Acts Three and Four.
I love Don José’s aria, in which I have to let Carmen know how much I hungered for her in prison. My desire for her love — that’s the most important part of it. I feel good about it vocally, it’s very comfortable. Whether I sing the final B-flat piano depends on what country I’m in! In Milan a coach told me, “The people want to hear your real sound, the full sound.” In America maybe I would sing it piano, as they like it in Germany. It is also a question of how I feel in this music — even if it’s the same role, every day it’s different.
The final act is amazing, so tense and dramatic. From the beginning there’s such passion in it, and finally it’s so touching. I really cry in the performance! On opening night in Amsterdam, after I killed her, I cried. It felt to me like a very real situation — I was totally in the role. It’s tough to cry and sing at the same time, but I could do it!
NADIA KRASTEVA
The Bulgarian mezzo-soprano (debut) has portrayed Carmen for more than ten companies internationally, including the Vienna Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Netherlands Opera, and Moscow's Bolshoi.
Carmen is complicated, and it’s difficult to show the character so that everyone will like and understand her. Some people want to see her very feminine, less aggressive, while others want exactly the opposite — more extreme, a little more vulgar.
The role belongs to a dark mezzo (the music wants that sound!) more than a lyric voice. Yes, there are places written lightly, like the Habanera and the Gypsy Song, and you can show her sense of humor in both the Habanera and the quintet, which is really like something from a light musical. Still, it has to be a darker voice that can immediately connect with more temperament and more passion. Through the music Bizet gave more colors to the character than you can imagine. Carmen is sometimes written very soft, like a cat, and at other times it’s written with such a big contrast in the tessitura, so that it’s more like a tiger.
Carmen’s love of her freedom is very important. She’s somehow connecting this freedom with her ideas of life, love and death. For me there is a parallel connection between those words: for Carmen, freedom, loving, living, and dying, are all somehow on one level. If, when she’s loving, she begins to lose her freedom, then she somehow feels she’s not living anymore.
The audience’s first impression should be of a woman who is flirty and light and joyful, but still with something hidden inside. I would think that Carmen is very much alone in her life, because she somehow can’t associate herself that much with other people. She doesn’t die for Escamillo — it’s impossible to think she would die for anyone. José says, “You will follow me!” but she would rather die than do what somebody is ordering her to do, in trying to take her freedom away from her.
BRANDON JOVANOVICH
The American tenor has previously sung Don José at the Metropolitan Opera, Glyndebourne, Flanders Opera, Washington National Opera, and Palm Beach Opera.
In the Mérimée novel, Don José is the only kid in his family, and you’d think it would be his role to carry on the family name, have a few kids and make mama happy. But instead, he goes to the seminary! He gets into a fight at a sports event, and he kills a guy. So he has two choices: go to prison or join the army. If you strip away all the layers of Don José, you see that he’s a good guy at heart; he wants to do right, and he’s trying to turn his life around. But right from the beginning he’s troubled, and he gets trapped in this web of Carmen. He can’t hold the reins on the one thing that seems to push him into all these situations that he finds himself — his anger. It boils forth and leads him down these paths.
The Flower Song is a microcosm of who Don José is, showing all aspects of the character in a four-minute aria. He talks about how the flower affected him in prison, how he latched onto it as the one saving grace in his life. What kept him going, giving him hope and resolve as he suffered in prison, was this woman, Carmen. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized he was just a thing in her life. The aria gives you the idea that he’s opening himself up to a woman for the first time.
Bizet gives us a fantastic arc in this character. He’s someone who’s reacting to everything going on around him, whereas everyone else has a straight path. Carmen, for example, doesn’t change from beginning to end: she’s a bad girl who likes to manipulate people and get her way. The only character you see changing in the opera is Don José.
On the Record
Roger Pines, dramaturg at Lyric Opera, recommends these recorded performances.
CDs
Berganza, Cotrubas, Domingo. Milnes; London Symphony Orchestra, Ambrosian Singers, cond. Abbado (DG)
Price, Freni, Corelli, Merrill; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Chorus, cond. Karajan (RCA)
Verrett, Te Kanawa, Domingo, Van Dam; Royal Opera House/Covent Garden, Solti (Opera d’Oro)
Troyanos, Te Kanawa, Domingo, Van Dam; London Phlharmonic Orchestra, cond. Solti (Decca)
Callas, Guiot, Gedda, Massard; Orchestra and Chorus of Paris Opera, cond. Prêtre (EMI Callas Edition)
Bumbry, Freni, Vickers, Paskalis; Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris, cond. Frühbeck de Burgos (EMI)
Horne, Maliponte, McCracken, Krause; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Manhattan Opera Chorus, cond. Bernstein (DG)
Resnik, Sutherland, Del Monaco, Krause; L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, cond. Schippers (Decca)
Baltsa, Ricciarelli, Carreras, Van Dam; Berlin Philharmonic, Chorus of the Opéra de Paris, cond. Karajan (DG)
With so many Carmens available, and with important artists comprising the leading quartet of all the above recordings, the choice remains strictly a matter of personal taste. An entirely satisfying performance is DG’s, in which Teresa Berganza combines the elegance needed for Bizet’s music with the vibrancy of a native Spanish personality. The stars partnering her are all sensitive musicians (as is everyone in the supporting cast), under Claudio Abbado’s invariably responsive baton.
For the ultimate in vocally glamorous Carmens, try RCA’s version with an exceptionally alluring Leontyne Price, joined by Franco Corelli, Robert Merrill, and — in the first of her three recorded Micaëlas — Mirella Freni. The two Americans and two Italians don’t offer the last word in French style (the supporting singers are all French, I hasten to add), but their full-blooded, colorful, emotionally committed performances, not to mention the sumptuous Vienna Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan, are ample compensation.
More thoroughly convincing style comes from the performances under Solti, whether in the studio or live at Covent Garden. Solti’s Decca performance — with the strong Troyanos/Te Kanawa/Domingo/van Dam lineup — offers the opéra-comique version (that is, with spoken dialogue), as does the Abbado recording and also that of Bernstein (commemorating the Met’s famous production from the mid-1970s). In each of those cases the dialogue is delivered by the singers themselves. Unfortunately, on EMI it is done by actors bearing no vocal resemblance to the singers, who include two grand-voiced protagonists, Grace Bumbry and Jon Vickers.
Out of print, alas, is the classic 1950 performance starring Solange Michel and Raoul Jobin, which has previously appeared on three different labels. Try seeking it out: the cast is all either native French or francophone, and the team from Paris’s Opéra-Comique — under a masterful conductor, André Cluytens — offers an effortless stylistic flair unmatched elsewhere.
DVDs
Krasteva, Elmgren, Antonenko, Holecek; Chorus and Orchestra of the National Theatre Brno, cond. Märzendorfer, dir. Bosio (EuroArts)
von Otter, Milne, Haddock, Tézier; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Festival Opera Chorus, cond. Jordan, dir. McVicar. (BBC Opus Arte)
Antonacci, Amsellem, Kaufmann, D’Arcangelo; Royal Opera House/Covent Garden, cond. Pappano, dir. Zambello (Decca)
Ewing, McLaughlin, McCauley, Holloway; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Opera Chorus, cond. Haitink, dir. Hall (Kultur)
Bumbry, Freni, Vickers, Diaz; Vienna Philharmonic, cond. and dir. Karajan (DG)
Baltsa, Mitchell, Carreras, Ramey; Metropolitan Opera, cond. Levine, dir. Hall (DG)
After you enjoy a particular performer at Lyric, it’s always a wonderful surprise to discover that the artist in question has documented the portrayal on CD or DVD. Go to the latter format for one of Lyric’s two 2010-11 Carmens, Nadia Krasteva. With choral and orchestral forces from the Czech Republic, the beauteous Bulgarian mezzo’s memorably sensual gypsy was recorded in 2005 in Austria at the St. Margarethen opera festival, a spectacular outdoor venue that was once an ancient Roman quarry.
The other available Carmen DVDs all have something distinctive to offer, from the thrilling Don José of Jonas Kaufmann (at Covent Garden) to the sumptuousness of the Met and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras in the DG performances. Very highly recommended is Glyndebourne’s 2002 production by David McVicar, the astonishingly versatile director whose Lyric work includes most recently Manon and Giulio Cesare. Here he is collaborating with Anne Sofie von Otter, who gives an extraordinarily bold performance, singing with her usual fastidiousness and in splendid French (including an unforgettable Habanera, which she sings while sensuously peeling and eating an orange). Opposite her is Marcus Haddock, playing a deeply touching Don José — like Kaufmann and von Otter, he is a non-native who sings the French language with great care and sensitivity. McVicar’s mesmerizing production is immeasurably aided by the boundlessly enthusiastic Glyndebourne chorus (they’re really showcased here), and by the authentic style of the conductor, Philippe Jordan.
BOLD TYPE = Artist appearing in this opera at Lyric in 2010-11