The gypsy sorceress Carmen sauntered into Annapolis over the weekend to shatter 35-year-old box-office records with the company's first-ever sold-out performances for both Friday and Sunday.
Most opera fans who attended should not have been disappointed by what they heard in a fully staged production that brought together the talents of the Annapolis Opera, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra the Ballet Theatre of Maryland, and a lively children's chorus along with an adult chorus to support the stellar singers in leading roles.
This Carmen production was visually exciting as well, featuring interesting sets that were sensitively lighted and attractive along with professional-looking costumes for all performers.
Georges Bizet's Carmen offers a fabulous score of familiar arias and provides verismo tension and high drama among its very human characters.
Free-spirited Gypsy femme fatale Carmen, who can capture every male heart and is ruled by her passions, cherishes her freedom above everything.
Corporal Don Jose is a dutiful soldier who dreams of home before Carmen arrives in the piazza to toss him a rose that sends a powerful message.
Having fought with others in the cigarette factory, Carmen is destined for jail until Jose allows her to escape. Jose goes to prison, and when he is freed goes immediately to Carmen, who persuades him to desert his regiment to join her in her Gypsy life of crime.
The story, perhaps focused as much on Jose as it is on Carmen, originated in Prosper Merimee's 1845 novella about a Spanish soldier recounting how he came to kill Carmen as he awaits his execution.
Now one of the world's most popular operas, Carmen didn't debut so well, with a famously hostile premiere in 1875 Paris that is said to have contributed to 36-year-old Bizet's death three months later.
Some ascribe the mixed reaction of the premiere audience to difficulty with the opera's realistic and violent characters -- which made Carmen the first verismo opera.
In Annapolis Opera's production, Leslie Mutchler as Carmen grew stronger in the role after what struck me as an unexciting opening. Her "Habanera" conveyed Carmen's insolence but lacked the expected smoky sensuousness. Perhaps her voice needed to warm up, because a few arias later Mutchler sang a throaty, sexy "Seguidille" to mesmerize Jose and the audience to end Act 1 on an exciting note. In Act 2 Mutchler's passionate duet with Jose on his return from prison invested her Carmen with a fully dimensional persona and had the added grace of her sensuous dance.
