‘Carmen’ @ The Dallas Opera
Photos by Kyle Flubacker
—Wayne Lee Gay
For the opening production of its 2025-26 season, The Dallas Opera promised to recreate the sets, costumes, and original score of the 1875 Parisian premiere of Bizet's Carmen.
The result is a stunning and successful vision of this enduring operatic masterpiece. French couturier Christian Lecroix has produced a set of vividly colorful costumes, based on existing sketches for the principal characters and informed conjecture for the rest of the cast. Set designer Antoine Fontaine had much less to go on in re-creating the sets and scenery—but armed with what we know of nineteenth-century opera house traditions, produced an unfailingly engaging atmosphere. Stage director Roman Gilbert likewise draws on documentation of existing stage direction from nineteenth-century productions, adapting them to the expectations of twenty-first-century audiences and the reality of modern, well-lit opera houses (all the while introducing some intriguing visual echoes of Goya).
The result is a visually delightful, musically glorious, psychologically insightful Carmen. Bizet here created one of the most complex characters in all drama, and gave her music of immediate and enduring power. Swiss mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti has the voice—radiant but with just the right touch of darkness—and the dramatic presence to create a Carmen who is at once powerful, seductive, and vulnerable.
Opposite Viotti, Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu brings powerful vocal clarity to a Don José who is darker and more complex then the usual portrayal of the character as a hopeless and helpless dupe. This Don José displays a tendency for violence; for once, the viewer can understand why Carmen turns against him. Also, we catch hints of Don José's strained relationship with a mother who tugs his chain from a distance. No wonder he joins the army and falls desperately in love at first opportunity. Thanks to well-planned lighting, this Don José becomes a giant, menacing shadow in the final scene.
American soprano Teresa Perrotta brings a strikingly strong timbre and presence as Micaela; this is a fearless Micaela who can obviously travel through the countryside alone. Korean baritone Gihoon Kim likewise brings, along with a gorgeous voice, just a bit of light-hearted texture to his role as a self-absorbed celebrity toreador. And together, soprano Diana Newman and mezzo-soprano Kristen Choi provide vocal and dramatic strength as Carmen's sidekicks Frasquita and Mercédès. The choral ensemble scenes (including a well-trained children's chorus from the Greater Dallas Society for Children and Youth) emerge with even greater than usual energy.
At the heart of it all, conductor and Dallas Opera music director Emmanuel Villaume captains this operatic enterprise with his usual musical insight, including a superb instinct for momentum in the three-hour-long work, as well as deep attention to the relationship of language and music. Musical values, drama, individual performances, and visual design all come together in a production that makes it easy to understand why Carmen is the world's favorite opera.
WHEN: October 17-26, 2025
WHERE: Winspear Opera House, Dallas Arts District
WEB: dallasopera.org
