A ‘Carmen’ That Really Smolders

Opera Pacific has made a new production of “Carmen” that affords much pleasure to the eye. The intriguing idea by Ron Daniels, the director, is to help us imagine what a quartet of Parisians--the composer Georges Bizet, the librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy, and the author Proper Merimee (upon whose novella the opera is based)--felt when they dreamed of the sunny, sensual, smoldering south. For Daniels and his set designer, Riccardo Hernandez, our equivalent of the Parisians’ Spain is Baja California. To spice up the sexual exoticism, the production team revived the 1940s and 1950s. Women emerge from the cigarette factory with open robes, revealing slips and push-up bras. Men, cocky in dark suits and fedoras, leer. Hot light drenches the atmosphere in sweat and stirs the passions.

The production represents a notable achievement for Hernandez, whose clumsy sets nearly sank Anthony Davis’ opera “Armistad” in Chicago three years ago and who designed Los Angeles Opera’s silly “Cenerentola” last season. Inspired by Mexican art and the look of Luis Bun~uel’s Mexican films from the ‘50s, he frames the stage with yellow beams, sometimes shaded orange when suffused with red light. Blood red is the color of the door to the cigarette factory, the walls of Lillas Pastia’s inn and the bullring. By the end of the opera, the entire set is drenched in red light, Carmen and Don Jose outlined in yellow spotlights. The inn is dull, but otherwise the set, James F. Ingalls’ amazing light and Constance Hoffman’s catchy costumes are not just visually remarkable but actually help us to see--and even to hear--the opera fresh.

Daniels is still relatively new to opera (he is best known for his work at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass.). “Carmen” on Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center was but his third production for the lyric stage (Opera Pacific’s fine “Madame Butterfly” in 1998 was his first). He admitted in an interview published in Performing Arts magazine never having before seen ‘Carmen,” but he imagines it vividly. He does not do away with all gypsy stereotypes--that is hardly feasible with standard-issue opera singers--but he brings an impressively clear dramatic focus to the staging.

Perceiving “Carmen” as a compelling battle of the sexes, Daniels does an excellent job in creating the explosive tension between a woman who insists upon liberation and a male society bent upon containing her. The director imposes such a sense of theatrical immediacy to the stage that it seemed downright incongruous that the language of the opera (the version with spoken dialogue was used) is French and not Spanish.

Irina Mishura, who sang Carmen on Tuesday (the leads alternate), is a powerful, rich, full, amber-toned mezzo-soprano. Her voice is ideal for the part, and she clearly attempted to exploit Carmen’s animal drive on stage. But calculation showed in every body movement and every line sung. She has great breath control, and each phrase is meticulously (and noticeably) prepared. She is an emotional singer and was most effective at the end of the opera--defiant and imperious, and with inexhaustible vocal reserves. But there is little of the Spanish gypsy in this Russian singer; she would do just as well not to dance or play castanets.

Mark Baker was the brutish Don Jose; Jeffrey Wells, the physically elegant Escamillo; Robin Follman, a vocally pressed Micaela. But there was very lively and telling character performances from Kristopher Irmiter (Zuinga), Malcolm MacKenzie (Morales and Dancairo), Christina Suh (Fransquita), Stephanie Woodling (a particularly effective Mercedes) and Chad Berlinghieri (Remendado).

John DeMain conducted a finely gauged performance, despite the evident challenge Bizet’s careful instrumental colors proved for the orchestra’s wind sections. The Opera Pacific Chorus, however, sounded--and looked--newly superb. The spirited All-American Boys Chorus was ever delightful.

* “Carmen” continues tonight, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. (with Angela Horn and Michael Hendrick as Carmen and Don Jose on Friday and Sunday), $29-$107, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, (800) 34-OPERA.