For its 50th anniversary season, Virginia Opera brought “Carmen” back to Norfolk’s Harrison Opera House for the first time in a decade earlier this month.
The show, which may be the largest production from Virginia Opera since before COVID, focused on bringing a traditional interpretation to the stage.
“It’s one of the top ten titles of all time in opera,” said Virginia Opera's Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Adam Turner, making it a popular choice for novice and veteran opera attendees.
“Carmen” is a story about a soldier who falls hopelessly in love with a woman, and in her rejection of him, is driven into a vengeful, rage-induced frenzy.
“It turns into somewhat of a psychological thriller,” Turner said. “Everybody loves it.”
The musical score demonstrates a French take on Spanish music — a unique and moving sound that is often recognizable by even the first-time attendees in the crowd.
“You don’t know where you’ve heard it, but people will have heard a lot of these tunes,” Turner said.
Besides the iconic soundtrack, the themes of the opera account for a huge part of its continued popularity. Despite this production's traditional costuming and staging aesthetic, “the story is very resonant and it continues to be relevant to this day,” Turner said.
“Everyone who’s been in love and has had passion for another person knows a lot of the feelings that the characters are expressing on the stage,” he said.
The decision to perform a more traditional production of Carmen has a part to do with the season’s arc and makeup, as well as the desire to “introduce operas to newcomers,” Turner said, “because every 5-10 years it’s a new audience.”
“It invites you into a different world, and lets you escape yours for three hours,” Turner said, “just sit back, unplug, join the analog world, remember what it was like, and hear this music affect you at your core. … You can feel that in a theater from 30 feet away, and there’s nothing like it. You can’t get that from a computer screen.”
Traditional, as opposed to contemporary interpretations, tend to be more extravagant and expensive because of the costuming and staging. This is especially true for Virginia Opera which often makes, instead of rents, its costuming to accommodate the diversity of the cast.
“It’s fun. It’s like playing dress-up,” Turner said. “The spectacle of the more traditional aesthetic” allows the audience to “reclaim some of that silence and stillness and appreciation for some of the finer things.”
Turner said younger attendees don’t automatically prefer contemporary interpretations, and vice versa.
“It goes every which way and backwards. There is no rhyme or reason to what finds people and what connects with people,” he said.
Virginia Opera is taking its production of “Carmen” on the road to Fairfax the weekend of November 16 at the George Mason Center for the Arts. For times and tickets, visit the Center for the Arts website.
The weekend of November 22, the Virginia Opera will perform “Carmen” in Richmond at the Carpenter Theatre. For times and tickets, visit the Carpenter Theatre online.
