Micaëla (Maria Agresta) hopes to marry Don José (Marcelo Álvarez), but he becomes smitten with Carmen. The orchestra plays the haunting theme of “The Flower Song,” making it apparent that Don José is as lost as Fred MacMurray was in “Double Indemnity” when he first saw Barbara Stanwyck’s ankle bracelet. She sings “Habanera” about the free nature of love and tosses a flower to the young soldier. When Don José returns from guard duty, he spots Carmen, a gypsy who works in a cigarette factory. (What is often treated as innocent horseplay by the soldiers in other productions is here presented as sexual harassment.) As he is on guard duty elsewhere, his fellow troopers make advances toward the young woman, who extricates herself and makes a getaway. The opera takes place in Seville and begins with an innocent young woman, Micaëla, looking for the man she wants to marry, army corporal Don José. The main reason for the enduring popularity of the opera is that Bizet penned one memorable melody after another, and the Met’s cast and orchestra, conducted by Asher Fisch, deliver. Even before the music begins, the audience is placed on notice that they are about to witness a tragedy by the jagged red line, like a stab wound, across the curtain. Sir Richard Eyre’s production of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” manages to be colorful while eschewing kitsch. Despite these glitches, the Met delivered a memorable night at the opera.

Carmen opera metropolitan review