Set in sunbaked Seville, it’s got doomed loves and a jealous murder. It’s got rough-around-the edges women working in a cigarette factory, plus soldiers, smugglers, a Roma femme fatale and a dashing bullfighter. It also has some of the best tunes anywhere.
One of the most popular of all operas, Georges Bizet’s Carmen opened the Dallas Opera’s 2025-26 season Friday night at the Winspear Opera House. Marking the 150th anniversary of Carmen’s premiere, the Dallas presentation imagines something of the look of the original Paris staging.
Hand painted sets, first seen in Rouen, France in ,2023, are based on illustrations of the 1875 premiere. Quite beautiful indeed, they’re credited to designer Antoine Fontaine.
Fashion designer Christian Lacroix has made some amendments to costumes, which make much of bright colors. (The cigarette girls are better dressed than usual.) Lighting, by Hervé Gary in Rouen, revived here by Stéphane Le Bel, doesn’t try to replicate 1870s gas lights.
News Roundups
Blocking is said to be based on an original staging manual. As in Rouen, though, characterizations and interactions have been coached, with mixed success, by stage director Romain Gilbert.
What we think of as the quintessentially Spanish opera was composed by a Frenchman, to a French libretto. Modern performances have often been done with conversations sung to recitatives composed after Bizet’s death by his friend Ernest Guiraud.
But the Dallas Carmen is done, as conceived and originally performed, with spoken dialogue — although not much is used. Supertitle translations leave many lines untranslated.
The Dallas Opera has had a recent run of great productions. This one, at least on opening night, was more hit and miss. Subsequent performances will probably improve.
Related
Two of the evening’s finest voices came in secondary roles. Laureano Quant’s Zuniga and Eleomar Cuello’s Moralès both served up handsome, well appointed baritones.
Marina Viotti’s Carmen looked more Highland Park glamorous than earthily enchanting. But her fine, soprano-ish mezzo was alternately seductive and scathing as needed. Saimir Pirgu was the ardent, and increasingly unhinged, Don José, with a powerfully sinewy tenor that could shade down for intimacies. In a French opera, though, as opposed to Italian, I yearned for a bit more vulnerability, more elegance.
Gihoon Kim’s Escamillo had a solid, creamy baritone, but it dried out too much in lower register, and he was never quite believable as a dashing toreador. The role of sweet Micaëla wanted tones less edgy than Teresa Perrotta’s.
Diana Newman and Kristen Choi were vivid presences, with fine voices, as, respectively Frasquita and Mercédès. Kyle Miller sang well as the feisty smuggler Dancaïre, with Matthew Goodheart a capable Remendado.
Who knows what the actual acting was like in 1875? But here some of the pawings at attempted seductions, and some choral flailings, seemed overdone. Carmen’s death in Don José’s arms wasn’t convincing.
The Dallas Opera Chorus, prepared by Paolo Bressan, sang splendidly when tempos weren’t too pressed. The Greater Dallas Choral Society supplied a boldly projected children’s chorus that was just rowdy enough.
The Dallas Opera Orchestra has been sounding superb in recent seasons, thanks to work by music director Emmanuel Villaume. But on Friday Villaume launched the opening Prelude at a tempo that had the orchestra scrambling, and it sounded more frantic than exhilarating at each subsequent appearance. (Surely its tempo should be set by the ensuing pre-echo of “Toreador, en garde.”)
Related
On the other hand, the flute-and-harp entr’acte before Act 3 was strangely lifeless. It didn’t help that the evening’s full and audibly enthusiastic audience kept talking through much of it. But Katie Wolber supplied a beautiful horn solo to introduce Micaëla’s “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante.”
Details
Repeats at 2 p.m. Oct. 19 and 26; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 and 25 at Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St. $19 to $458. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org.