Dual Personalities : Singers Share ‘Carmen’ Role at O.C. Center but Not Interpretations

There will be no cliche roses in the teeth, or hands on the hips, of either of the Carmens who will be alternating in Opera Pacific’s presentation of Georges Bizet’s popular work, which opens this weekend at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

For Graciela Araya, the Chilean native who sings tonight, “Carmen” is about the collision of two cultures, Spanish and Gypsy. For Irina Mishura, who sings Sunday, the character is a rare combination of realist and idealist.

Carmen and Don Jose, the hapless soldier who falls hopelessly in love with her, are from opposite worlds, according to Araya. “They will never understand each other. For a Spanish man, it’s a scandal to fall in love with a Gypsy. You sleep with Gypsies, but you don’t marry them. And the Gypsies say the Spanish are dirt. They’re stupid. It’s not worth robbing them because they are so stupid; it’s no challenge to rob them. And the Spanish military man is even more stupid. I know because I have friends who are Gypsies, and they say it.”

So these attitudes persist even today?

“Always,” she answered. “I didn’t learn this in Chile. I learned this in Germany. I was in Dusseldorf, and there you have a lot of Spanish people working in restaurants, and they bring Gypsies to sing there. Those are the only places where you can go to eat at 3 o’clock in the morning.”

From the friends she made in Dusseldorf, she gathered more insights into the conflicts between the two cultures. For Gypsy Carmen, the Spanish torero Escamillo is attractive not only because he likes danger and death but because, more important, “he represents her opportunity to come into the upper class because she’s his woman,” Araya said.

“Assuming that he doesn’t lose [at bullfighting], she will be in the upper class. As soon as he loses, she will be again the normal Gypsy in the street. So he gives her this possibility which Don Jose will never be able to give. He will marry her, but nobody will accept her.”

Araya, 37, has been singing since she was 8. Initially she was more interested in theater and musicals than opera. “And for three years, I did only musicals--’Fiddler on the Roof,’ ‘Man of La Mancha.’

“When I did my first opera [as Maddalena in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at the Teatro Muninicap], I hated it. Rehearsals were very short, people were flying in from all over the world. But above all, I hated the myths about singing. Why did people make such a commotion? They’re human people. I’m talking about the audiences. Why did they want to see singers as coming from another planet? The audiences make this mystification that is not true. It’s a very dangerous thing.”

Still, the more opera she sang, the more it inspired her. She moved to Germany in 1986, singing in Aachen before moving to Dusseldorf. She now sings regularly at the Vienna State Opera. She recently sang Carmen in a new production by Guy Joosten at the Theater Monnaie in Brussels.

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Mishura was born in the Russian city of Krasnodar, near the Black Sea, and sang with the Moldavian State Opera for seven years until post-independence unleashed a flood of anti-Semitism and anti-Russian nationalism that she says forced her out of the troupe. She immigrated in 1992 to the United States with her then-husband Alex and their daughter Raisi who now, at 12 1/2, has taken the more American name Rachel.

In March, Mishura sang Suzuki in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” for Opera Pacific. She also sang in a Los Angeles Philharmonic concert version of Tchaikovsky’s “Iolanta” led by Valery Gergiev in May at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

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Ironically, she did her first Carmen when the same State Opera that drove her away called her back in 1993 to create the role for the first time in the theater’s history.

“It was unbelievable. I told myself it was a joke! They wanted me to leave, they didn’t want me to perform, and they’re calling me back?! I went back and everything had changed. All those enemies became friends, and you know why? It’s funny for you, for American people to understand: because I came from the United States. I came like an American person and I had that special treatment from everybody.”

It was sweet vindication for her. “When I came here,” she recalled, “I came like a regular immigrant, with no reputation, with no name. Nobody was interested that I was a singer, that I had more than 20 roles in my repertory. So I was living that first year with no hope that I would sing again on the stage.

“It was very hard. I sat in my poor apartment crying because I could not get a singing job. Other Russian immigrants went to beauty school or computer school to get an education and start life all over. I told myself, no, I spent so many years studying singing, I don’t want to go to beauty salons and do manicures.

“Little by little, I learned the language and I tried to push myself on to a singing career. It’s very different compared to Russia. Here, you have to have a lot of auditions to get jobs, to get known. In Russia, you have one audition. But your job would be forever with the one company, all your life. You will get a little salary and you will never have money. Never.”

Now she is booked three years in advance.

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And Carmen is special for her. “She is a natural leader. Why are all the men in Act I waiting for her arrival? Why do the smugglers need her to direct their operations? I think she has that leadership.”

She also is an idealist, looking for a man who will accept her philosophy of life. “She has to be free,” Mishura said. “At first she thinks [that man] might be Jose, but no, he’s the wrong one. He’s like all men. He wants to possess her. But Escamillo? Maybe . . .”

* Graciela Araya sings the title role of “Carmen” by Georges Bizet today at 7 p.m., Sept. 20 and 22 at 8 p.m., and Sept. 24 at 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Irina Mishura takes over the role on Sunday at 2 p.m. and Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. $15 to $85. (714) 556-2787.