Word: carmens
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...inexperienced. But it was all overshadowed by his personality and talent. Experience anyone can get." Mehta made his Met debut in December 1965 with Aïda, quickly became one of the top cocks in the Met pit. This season he has conducted three major productions, including a new Carmen. Says Bing: "I am still impressed by his talent and personality-and now it is less funny...
Primary Spark. Yet Mehta's motions are by no means shallow showmanship. They help make his performance "live all the time," in the words of Met Tenor Nicolai Gedda, who sings under Mehta in Carmen. Says Gedda: "He does not drag and he does not rush; he has the kind of pulse that is absolutely right." This is Mehta's essence as a musician: an instinct for the living pulse of a piece of music, along with a molten core of romantic feeling and a point-of-no-return commitment...
Prosper Merimee novella rather than from the encrustation of operatic melodramatics that have come to form the accepted Carmen style, Barrault restored to brimming life the tale of the gypsy charmer and the innocent soldier she dupes into loving her. "The story," says Barrault, "is tragedy rather than melodrama. It is a human tragedy, surrounded by a society that is so caught up in its own dance of life that it is indifferent to the suffering of others...
...suggest this framework, Designer Jacques Dupont created a set in which all four acts were played in an open arena. As Carmen worked her wiles on Don Jose, for example, a crowd representing all social levels wandered up and down the tiers of the arena in complete indifference, doing little dance steps of amused noninvolvement...
...glory at the Met as the villainesses in A'ida and Don Carlo, has yet to master the sinuous individuality of the French musical line. Though often incisive, Mehta's operatic work does not yet measure up to his symphonic accomplishments. As a result, Barrault created a Carmen that was acted more than it was sung. But he also provided the Met with a brilliant venture into musical theater...