A BAD CARMEN, AN EXCITING ELISABETTA : <i> And Other Oddities at the Metropolitan </i>

Funny things are happening at the Metropolitan Opera. Not funny as in amusing. Funny as in strange.

The funniest by far is a lavish, perverse, wildly misbegotten new production of “Carmen.”

Although savaged after opening night by the local press (odd exceptions: the New Yorker and the Village Voice), Bizet’s maligned masterpiece invariably draws full houses. At least the houses are full at the start of the evening.

However, it is a very long evening. The final curtain falls just before midnight. The marathon is attenuated by full restitution of the original French dialogue--endless dialogue that few seem to understand either on the stage or out front.

The audience exodus began on April 11 during--not after, but during --Act I. That is when the boos began, too.

The boos did not seem to be directed at the vexingly conventional, vaguely realistic, often illogical staging scheme of Sir Peter Hall, or at the ponderous, over-elaborate decors of Hall’s favored cohort, John Bury.

The boos weren’t even intended for Vladimir Popov, a stiff Russian tenor who--following Luis Lima and Placido Domingo as Don Jose--revealed a heroic bleat, comically primitive ideas about acting and total ignorance of Gallic expression.

The boos had nothing to do with Catherine Malfitano’s bland Micaela, with Michael Devlin’s vapid Escamillo or with the routine, somnambulistic efforts mustered by the comprimarios and chorus.

Perhaps the boos should have been aimed at James Levine. One could forgive his Prussian- Kapellmeister treatment of the score on this occasion. It was difficult to forget, however, that he, as company music director, was responsible for putting together this bleak musico-dramatic melange in the first place.

For some reason, New Yorkers don’t boo James Levine. They boo Maria Ewing.

Ewing, you may recall, is a fresh and winsome singing-actress who has brought unhackneyed distinction to such portrayals as the feverish Cherubino in Mozart’s “Figaro,” the impetuous Composer in Strauss’ “Ariadne” and, perhaps most memorable, the adorably sexy waif of Offenbach’s “La Perichole.” She also is a fine concert singer. More important, she happens to be the wife of Sir Peter Hall.

Her lightweight mezzo-soprano emerges thin at the bottom these days and thick at the top. She pays a lot of attention to the text and to dynamic gradations. She doesn’t mind resorting to broad vocal distortion for theatrical effect. She has cultivated a very convincing French accent.

She has steadfastly spurned the usual show-a-lot-of-cleavage, paste-hands-on-hips and stick-rose-in-teeth cliches. She is original. She is tough. She is smart. One wants to like her as Carmen.

One can’t.

She is patently, hopelessly miscast. Lacking an instantly compelling presence, lacking automatic erotic allure, lacking a voluptuous sound, she tries desperately to play Carmen her way: as a nasty, gritty little ugly duckling. That, we assume, also is her husband’s way.

Barefoot, she makes her entrance just before the Habanera with her back to the audience. She looks thin, boyish, gawky. She sports a drab, demure, flowery dress, something Laura Ashley might have concocted when she ran out of inspiration. In the Gypsy-camp scene, Ewing shades her presumably expressive features under a fashionably floppy hat.

This Carmen apparently knows her fate from the start. She never smiles. In fact, she always pouts. Emotionally, she has nowhere to go.

She is downcast, mopey, a Pitiful Pearl who can’t even pretend to be a femme fatale . There is nothing irresistible about her, nothing heroic, and certainly nothing tragic. If one squints at the stage, one loses her amid the chorus ladies.

When she doesn’t force for impact, she makes decent, grainy, dull sounds. When she strives for intimacy--which is most of the time--she reduces legato insinuation to parlando conversation.

She follows her husband’s sometimes stilted, sometimes absurd stage direction all too faithfully. That means she opts for a slow and clumsy escape at the end of the first act, climbing an upright ladder that should make her an all-too-easy target for the soldiers’ rifles.

It means she derisively calls Jose a “canary” in Act II--even though his uniform, which should be yellow, happens in this contradictory instance to be black.

It means she plunks herself down on the obviously frozen earth in the third act and blithely plays cards in the snow.

She leaves a gaping hole in the middle of a production riddled with helpless ineptitude.

One would like to dismiss the indulgent Ewing-Hall collaboration as a passing aberration, a nepotistic nod that affects only Fun City. But the new Music Center Opera-- our Music Center Opera--will present a new “Salome”--repeat, “Salome”!--employing the same minidiva-and-director package in October.

The New Yorkers are laughing already.

“Aida” was no better.

The cast didn’t look good on paper, not to the cognoscenti, although it did look expensive. On the stage, the singers looked like statues.

John Dexter’s production--an ugly, semi-stylized relic designed by David Reppa in 1976 and now rehearsed by David Sell--looked dark; also silly. The choreography of Louis Johnson--a riot of beefcake sales and hootchy-kootch competitions--looked ludicrous.

Still, one must never overestimate the sophistication of the New York public. Audiences at the Met still arrive late, leave early, applaud in the wrong places, and pay up to $75 for the privilege. The subscribers who booed “Carmen” bravoed “Aida” on April 7. Lustily.

The chief attraction, no doubt, was Luciano Pavarotti as Radames. He is more comfortable with Verdi’s arduous, arching lines now than he was when he first attempted them in San Francisco five years ago. In general, his singing is smoother and his pacing wiser. The voice per se remains a thing of rare beauty.

The tenorissimo continues to cause frustration, however. He falls clumsily between the obvious vocal chairs, as it were. He cheats the lyricism of “Celeste Aida” (long, loud high B-flat at the end) and the Nile Scene, just as he cheats the heroism of the Triumphal Scene and the third-act finale. He generalizes everything vocally and trivializes everything dramatically, flirting all the while with the caricature of a quaintly overstuffed divo.

Anna Tomowa-Sintow in the title role cannot efface memories of Milanov, Tebaldi and Price. She cannot even compete honorably with memories of Lucine Amara, Mary Curtis Verna and Gabriella Tucci (how quickly we forget). Inexplicably a Karajan favorite, Tomowa-Sintow is a mistress of Slavic stridency, an expert at sliding up to wonted pitches and a stranger to the power of the pianissimo. For Verdi, her voice is small, her style foreign.

Fiorenza Cossotto, a very raw Amneris with a limited top voice, contents herself with shouting, swooping and posing. In the process, she lends new depths of meaning to the concept of vulgarity.

Under the depressing circumstances, one should be grateful for the bluff routine of Louis Quilico as Amonasro, if not for the tired croaking of Joseph Rouleau (another of those unnecessary British imports) as Ramfis. The gratuitous voice of the offstage Priestess belonged to Pavarotti’s ubiquitous protegee, Madelyn Renee.

In a week that found him self-burdened with two “Carmens,” a “Rosenkavalier” and a “Parsifal” in addition to this “Aida,” James Levine managed to conduct with frequent valor and dauntless vigor.

After the “Carmen” fiasco and the “Aida” disaster, one approached “Don Carlo” (April 12 matinee) with trepidation. Optimism has hardly bolstered by rumors of backstage strife. Lincoln Center thrives on rumors.

Bruno Bartoletti, the intended conductor, had relinquished his baton to the resident chorus master, David Stivender. Florence Quivar, the originally scheduled Eboli, had been replaced by Shirley Verrett.

The most crucial change involved Elisabetta di Valois. The regal heroine was to have been Katia Ricciarelli, who, in turn, had been succeeded by Mara Zampieri. After the dress rehearsal, the prima-donna duties fell abruptly to a little-known soprano from Los Angeles about whom all New York already is sighing: Aprile Millo.

Surprise. It was a wonderful performance, despite the odds and the oddities. Perhaps because of them.

Stivender didn’t just conduct with the professionalism one had a right to expect. He conducted with rare breadth, warmth and flexibility, with tension that made the sprawling five-act version of the opera seem almost short and taut. He savored Verdi’s brooding passions, showed decent respect for the long line and the delayed climax. Moreover, he gave the singers maximum breathing space and got the chorus to sing for him as if lives were at stake (they probably were).

He inspired sensitive responses from the marvelous orchestra, too, even if he occasionally allowed the pit to overpower the stage.

The cast could not be called ideal. Giuliano Cianella, though sympathetic and much improved, sounded relentlessly brash in the title role. For all her style, dignity and urgency, Verrett could not invariably conceal the weakness of her lower notes or the thinness of her top. As the formidable old Inquisitor, Dimitri Kavrakos virtually relinquished his share of the chilling confrontation between church and state.

None of this mattered much in context. James Morris introduced a vital, relatively young, resolutely aggressive Filippo whose basso soared so mightily in the high climaxes that one wanted to forgive a decrease in force as the line descended. Leo Nucci exuded compassion and bel-canto fervor as Rodrigo.

And then there was Millo. She is only 27, relatively inexperienced. She is not tall, not particularly thin or glamorous. She is not the most sophisticated actress in the world. And she is, without question, one of the most exciting, most promising, most reassuring talents before the public today.

Unlike her famous counterparts in this blighted repertory, Millo commands a genuine spinto : a big, lustrous lyric soprano that cuts easily through the mightiest orchestral and choral blanket, shimmers at the top, sustains its impact in the lower vocal depths and, most important perhaps, projects richness and warmth in the middle.

If one concentrated with stubborn intensity, one could note a passing blemish here and there. But the radiant sincerity of her expression, the generosity of her spirit, the ease and sweetness of her pianissimo tones, the ardor of her climactic utterances--these rare, rare qualities obliterated everything.

Aprile Millo. Remember the name, and pray that she doesn’t move too fast.