Resourceful London City Opera Stages a Credible ‘Carmen’

The London City Opera is a small troupe that can make a big impact.

Take its modest production of Bizet’s “Carmen” Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, a few days after Martin McEvoy’s 10-year-old company made its California debut in El Cajon.

Within Peter Rice’s skillfully utilized and camouflaged arched single set, the choristers had to double and triple in various guises--guards, gypsies, cigarette factory workers and so on--as they often have to do.

But stage director Mary Anne Kraus so individualized them in these different roles that their multiple appearances suggested a breadth, not a poverty, of company talent. Her fluid groupings and regroupings for the processional in the fourth act, for instance, was a model of credibility and invention.

The small (20-member) orchestra proved more of a problem, requiring certain rescored passages that provided less of an impact than usual and rather odd sonorities to boot. But conductor John Beswick kept the music going, if at some expense of subtlety.

Little apology, however, needs to be made for Yvonne Fontane’s sensuous, credible, living-in-the-moment Carmen. Though she tired vocally a bit toward the end, she kept the character vivid and alive and, reasonably for a change, justified Carmen taking over the stage whenever she appeared.

Neither Brendan MacBride, who offered monochromatic vocalism as Don Jose, nor Richard Morris, as a woolly voiced Escamillo, came close to reaching her level.

As Micaela, Catherine Mikic was sweet, though sometimes wandering in pitch.

A different set of principals was scheduled to sing Saturday.

In secondary roles, the women--Helen Greenaway (Mercedes) and Sarah Jane Whyte (Frasquita)--outclassed the men.

The production used the time-dishonored Choudens’ edition with Guiraud’s recitatives in place of spoken dialogue. Cuts included the changing of the guard and the children’s chorus in the first act. For all that, including the sung recitatives, Bizet’s opera still proved a powerful music drama.