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You know from the opening downbeat that the Mets latest new production is going to be aCarmenon wheels.
Conductor Daniele Rustioni tears through the overture like a driver with a radar detector and a taste for risk.
Once the curtain goes up, the action takes place at the side of a road.
After intermission, we see the same truck on its side and in flames.
The Mets latest stuckCarmenis directed by Carrie Cracknell, who comes to itwith two disadvantages.
This is a landscape where only the luckless pull over and stop.
The sparking currents of class and race are timely.
Don Jose is a passive but possessive male who can only assert himself through violence.
Carmen deploys her sexuality as a weapon because thats pretty much all the power she has.
The works power is its specificity.
Carmen is a complicated person, not an archetype.
She works in a cigarette factory, linking a Parisian gentlemans consumer pleasures with tobaccos brutal labor conditions.
In attempting to make the story more trenchant, Cracknell has effectively softened it.
Take the character of Escamillo, the swaggering toreador whos been retrained as a rodeador.
These misconceptions would matter little if they framed a musically spectacular performance.
In this case, though, the cast seems unsteady, or at least unconvinced.
When that happens, it means yourCarmenhas a problem.
Carmenis at the Metropolitan Opera through May 25.
