So much hard work and so many good intentions obviously went into the production of ”La Tragedie de Carmen,” presented Saturday night at Grant Park by members of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, that one feels almost churlish for not responding more warmly to it.
In 1981, when director Peter Brook`s back-to-Merimee version was new, it was acclaimed for getting rid of the picture-postcard adornments and inflated spectacle that a century of non-stop popularity have heaped on the Bizet opera.
Bizet`s score was replaced by a truncated, cut-and-paste rearrangement. The dramatic action, barely lasting 90 minutes, was similarly rearranged, with Carmen in this version more obviously a tough trollop and Don Jose a coldblooded murderer driven by sexual obsession.
As staged by Brook, using only four singers, two actors, and a 15-piece orchestra, the distilled drama of harsh animal passions rubbed the audience`s nose in the stark realism of the original novella.
But ”Carmen” has come a long way since Brook`s version. ”La Tragedie de Carmen” no longer seems audacious, merely a flawed footnote to a masterpiece: In the name of tightening the opera`s dramatic unity, it oversimplifies it, reducing complex characters to fatalistic ciphers.
A closed-circuit hookup allowed the huge crowd on Butler Field to view the proceedings up close. Scott Marr`s simple, stylized unit set pushed the action to the brink of the Petrillo Music Shell stage. The singers (the weekend concerts were double-cast) and Andrew Foldi`s stage direction were well-routined by this point in the show`s run.
The Lyric cast sang decently, but neither their acting nor French diction were strong enough to carry the intensified dramatic burden of this version. Worse, overamplification robbed the singing of dynamic nuance and Gallic finesse. The most unfortunate victim of this was tenor Patrick Denniston, the stolid Don Jose, whose body-miking was so loud that even people in Door County could have shared in his vocal distress during the Flower Song.
Terese Fedea revealed a smoky, well-schooled mezzo with a lower range more breathy than alluring. Though she threw herself gamely into the dramatic demands, this Carmen seemed more a nice village girl gone astray than a trashy gypsy spitfire.
Elias Mokole delivered Escamillo`s Toreador Song with more virile ease than is customarily heard. Rodrick Dixon and Mark Jones took the speaking roles of Zuniga/Old Gypsy and Lilla Pastia/Garcia, respectively. Randall Behr conducted with verve and style.
”La Tragedie de Carmen” will have two more performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in Hutchinson Courtyard, University of Chicago.
