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Isabel Leonard’s Carmen did not quite match his interpretation.

He sang with a strong, expressive voice that commanded attention. The standout was Michael Fabiano as an ardent, impulsive Don José.

There were other gratuitous ideas throughout-smugglers carrying their contraband in upscale shopping bags, jugglers and tumblers among the Roma band, unmotivated entrances and exits by the chorus-but the evening was redeemed by the musical performance. She bravely did all that was asked of her and moved with winning grace, but came across as just another idea that had no obvious point. She appeared repeatedly, sometimes pantomiming the music as in the opening prelude, at other times engaging with the characters. Most confounding was a solitary child dancer, unidentified in the program but actually the seven-year-old daughter of bass Kevin Burdette who appeared in two of the summer’s other productions. Isla Burdette as the child on the set of Santa Fe Opera’s Carmen. The soldiers were dressed in bland pale-green. The costumes were somewhere between the 1970s and the present day, with Micaela dressed in bib overalls and a backpack, Carmen in drab student outfits, the smugglers in undistinguished modern dress. All four scenes were placed on the grounds of an abandoned third-rate carnival, with remnants of a roller-coaster track framing the stage, a solitary bumper car downstage left, randomly placed ticket booths and other suggestions of a long-forgotten fairgrounds. In Santa Fe the music was mostly in evidence, but the production was a confounding mishmash.ĭirector Mariame Clément and designer Julia Hansen had lots of ideas, but they added up to confusion more than concept. The score contains some of the most memorable music opera can offer. Don José is subject to the most violent passions over which he has no control, while Carmen remains an independent women who makes her own decisions right to the end, though it cost her her life. 2) is about a soldier’s obsessive love for a free-spirited woman. All photos courtesy of the Santa Fe Opera.Ĭarmen (I saw the performance of Aug. Michael Fabiano as Don José and Isabel Leonard as Carmen.