Pomeroy and Margaine steam up the COC's Carmen. Photo: Michael Cooper. The best way to summarize my own response to the Canadian Opera Company’s current production of Carmen – which I saw on Wednesday (April 20) at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre – is to say that it grew on me. Subtly, gradually and artfully, this Carmen won me over.
The production has many good things going for it: intelligent staging from Toronto director Joel Ivany (in his debut with the COC), and intricately realistic sets and costumes from Michael Yeargan and François St-Aubin, respectively. Strictly speaking, this Carmen is an update, placed in Cuba in the 1940s. But it’s done so smoothly and effectively that most of the opera fundamentalists in the audience – the kind of people who get their knickers in a twist about the “composer’s intentions” – probably didn’t even realize they should have felt offended.
The production has many good things going for it: intelligent staging from Toronto director Joel Ivany (in his debut with the COC), and intricately realistic sets and costumes from Michael Yeargan and François St-Aubin, respectively. Strictly speaking, this Carmen is an update, placed in Cuba in the 1940s. But it’s done so smoothly and effectively that most of the opera fundamentalists in the audience – the kind of people who get their knickers in a twist about the “composer’s intentions” – probably didn’t even realize they should have felt offended.
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