JosÈ, his possessive, psychotic character, was as essential to the story as Carmen herself. A fine actor as well as a singer, Adrian Kramer painted pictures with the colors in his voice. Instead we saw raw emotion, love and hate. Gone were the smugglers and their wonderful quintet. Of course with a chamber orchestra and many fewer characters, there were no ensembles in the La TragÈdie. Then we understood that the soldier’s thoughts had long since left his elderly mother and the village girl who expected to marry him. At one point, Carmen was involved in a threesome with JosÈ and Lillas. Nevertheless, he held it as he sang a beautifully lyrical “Flower Song.” When the story moved to the inn, we met Max Cadillac as Lillas Pastia, an amusing female impersonator and hostess extraordinaire. The memento she gave JosÈ, sung by tenor Adrian Kramer, was a red knitted stocking, not a flower. Her “Seguidilla’ was delightful, her “Gypsy Song” enchanting, and there were no extra soldiers to harass her. Peabody Southwell sang Carmen with a sultry sound and played up her intense sexuality.
Thus, she did not need to have the big operatic voice we normally hear singing over a full orchestra. Carmen fascinated JosÈ with the “Habanera” but the orchestra had been pared down to a fifteen-member chamber ensemble. With no chorus of soldiers in the background and no children imitating them, the focus was on the rivalry and its results.
The country girl put up a fight, however, and in this version of the story she had more spunk than in the grand opera. However, she still managed to divert JosÈ’s attention from Micaela even though the latter sang with lustrous tones. Brook’s Carmen was no longer a glamorous gypsy and she had lost her factory job. He is mentioned in the Proper MerimÈe’s original book but not in the opera. If you are wondering who Garcia is, he is Carmen’s husband. The characters were Carmen, Don JosÈ, Zuniga, Micaela, Escamillo, Garcia, and Lillas Pastia.
Rather then enumerate all the characters and musical numbers omitted, I will simply list the main characters and mention much of the music we heard at the Balboa Theatre on Friday evening. In 1983 Stage Director Peter Brook, in collaboration with writer Jean-Claude CarriËre and composer Marius Constant, pared down the French grand opera to its bare essentials and presented La TragÈdie de Carmen, a ninety-minute version of the story.
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