2 ‘Carmens’: comme ci, comme ca

Los Angeles Opera fielded two teams in Bizet’s portrait of obsessive desire in “Carmen” over the weekend at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Placido Domingo conducted several recent company stars Friday night. On Saturday, newcomer Nicola Luisotti led a group of singers who mostly were making company debuts.

Neither team proved ideal. Each contained some unhappy, questionable casting. But each also had pleasant surprises, and Bizet ultimately prevailed.

The period production, with sets created in 1998 by Gerardo Trotti, hails from the Teatro Real in Madrid. The first act jams the action into a brightly lighted, wedge-shaped street scene, with singers making important entrances and exits from a narrow point upstage.

Lillas Pastia’s tavern in the second act prompted a wag in the audience to remark on its similarity to Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean. The mountains of the third act were appropriately precipitous. The square outside the fourth-act bullring was clean and barren.

Stage director Emilio Sagi kept things moving in the crowd scenes, which featured that generic opera acting that purports to be realistic action. Ditto in the action between the principal singers. Sagi offered few innovations, though, and one was more confusing than helpful: Carmen lingered to observe Don Jose and Micaela’s first meeting, suggesting a jealousy she doesn’t exhibit anywhere in the score.

Sagi is not the first to have the Gypsies execute Zuniga, captain of the dragoons (strongly sung by Jamie Offenbach), at the end of the second act. But that is inconvenient, because librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy brought Zuniga back briefly in the last act. An otherwise anonymous soldier (Reid Bruton) sings his last two lines.

More important, Milena Kitic, who sang Giulietta in Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann” for L.A. Opera in 2002, brought a rich, creamy mezzo-soprano and a commanding strength to the title role Friday. She dominated the opera, exactly as a Carmen is supposed to do.

Her Don Jose was Richard Leech, a Metropolitan Opera stalwart and frequent L.A. Opera visitor. Unfortunately, Leech had only two dynamic settings -- loud and extra-loud, and he has acquired a wobbly bleat. If he was hard to listen to, at least his portrait of obsession was strongly etched.

Carmen Giannattasio, Amor in last season’s “Orfeo,” was a focused, pure-voiced Micaela. Erwin Schrott, who wowed audiences here as Don Giovanni and Mozart’s Figaro, had some trouble with Escamillo’s low notes, but he rolled some of the longest Rs likely heard in the opera’s French and inhabited the role’s vainglorious virility completely.

In his role as conductor, Domingo, who is beloved by Los Angeles audiences, got the most applause when the cast took its bows Friday. He had led a skillful, strong performance. Even so, Bizet was better served Saturday by Luisotti, who alone of the participants got a standing ovation at the end.

Music director of the Teatro Verdi in Salerno, Italy, Luisotti led a dynamic, subtle and tightly cohesive account of the score. He even managed to accommodate Catherine Malfitano’s wayward, abrupt slamming of the breaks on tempos.

Malfitano’s light lyric soprano may not ever have been right for Carmen. In its current state, it tended to evaporate, as well as meander through pitches. Malfitano has always been a powerful singing actor. Even so, there comes a time in a long career when a person should reconsider singing Bizet’s femme fatale. Malfitano’s vamping verged on caricature.

Mario Malagnini, making his company debut as her Don Jose, was wooden as an actor and constricted as a singer. Obsessive madness at the end of the opera finally opened him up.

In his company debut, Franco Pomponi made a pale Escamillo. On the other hand, Chilean soprano Angela Marambio, in her company debut, strikingly portrayed a deep moral growth in Micaela, from naive country girl in Act 1 to a forceful presence in Act 3. She was justifiably the most cheered of the singers Saturday.

In secondary roles both nights, in addition to Offenbach’s secure Zuniga, Joohee Choi and Diana Tash proved notable as Frasquita and Mercedes, respectively. The chorus, trained by William Vendice, sang with force and suavity. Anne Tomlinson’s Los Angeles Children’s Chorus was charming.

As an untypical Lillas Pastia in drag, Worthie Meacham made the voiceless role a presence. Alan Burrett lighted the opera efficiently. Jesus del Pozo designed the costumes largely in pale shades of taupe, then for some reason he draped the women in strangely stringy mantillas in the final act. It wasn’t a grand fashion parade in olde Seville.

*

‘Carmen’

Where: Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Nov. 5 and 6; 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 3 and 7

Price: $25 to $190

Contact: (213) 972-8001