I love the phrase “a tight 90.” It’s a way to talk about films that are only 90 minutes long with inordinate quality, and it’s a good way to describe The Tragedy of Carmen, an abridged adaptation of Carmen, one of the most famous operas of all time. Tulsa Opera’s performance of The Tragedy of Carmen was tight, taut, and only a little confusing.
Dragging down the average age in the audience by at least ten years, I watched singers/actors Stephanie Doche and Nathan Bowles circle each other in an excruciating dance of eros and death. Doche was perfectly seductive and impossible to ignore as Carmen, the skirt-twirling Romani woman who lures and rejects men practically in the same breath. Bowles demonstrated a fantastic and fatalistic machismo as one of the objects of Carmen’s wiles: Don José, a disgraced and violent soldier who falls hard for Carmen but cannot face the reality of her freewheeling ways; he deals with his inadequacy by killing her. It is, after all, a tragedy.
The singers were brilliant. Doche’s range was meteoric, and her lithe, uncanny performance left me wondering if I myself would not be led into insanity if someone like her came up to me and offered to dance the seguidilla. And Bowles managed to be both an intimidating and awkward presence on stage, staggering and sliding in the same phrase, both pathetic and powerful.
The opera was sexy as hell, too. Doche played up the romanticism of her twirling red skirt, sitting on table corners with her legs spread, and hiking herself against the male leads like scratching posts. Jason Detwiler’s Escamillo, the matador, affected an effortless sensuality, seducing Carmen with his “Toreador” song. During the scenes in which Don José tied up Carmen and dragged her around, I, blushing, crossed my legs.
As the opera’s accompaniment, the small pit orchestra was occasionally slightly out of tune, recovering for long periods only to fall apart once again. And while an intentionally warbling tone might fit with the thematic desperation of the story, the tonal issues were more distracting than affirming. That said, the issues were temporary, and the piece always recovered quickly.
As a piece of writing, The Tragedy of Carmen does well in narrowing its subject matter, though small plot points were confusing to the non-enthusiast. By turns, the opera is funny, terrifying, sad, and beautiful. These songs will be stuck in my head for weeks.
The program I received, strangely enough, had no information on the opera itself. I would have loved to read about the piece before watching it, but it seems to have been forgotten. I found myself, many times, cocking my head to the side as characters made choices that seemed ridiculous or fanciful. But then, I suppose that’s what frenzied love can do to you.
The Pickup's reviews are published with support from The Online Journalism Project.
