“Carmen” a not quite fatal attraction to close out Wolf Trap summer season
Elissa Pfaender and Daniel O’Hearn starred in Wolf Trap Opera’s Carmen. Photo: Cory Weaver
Wolf Trap Opera’s final production, a single-night production staged at the Filene Center, is a late-summer ritual. This year’s installment, Bizet’s Carmen, played to a capacity crowd in and on the ground around the outdoor theater, providing comfort to anyone fearing opera has lost its ability to draw large audiences. Even Seville-level heat and humidity could not keep people away from this tale of obsession and violence.
Most of the swelter, it turned out, came from the atmosphere rather than the stage. Elissa Pfaender’s vocal power served her well in the title role, with a refulgent mezzo that resonated boldly at both bottom and top. Her musical confidence wavered only once, with an early entrance in the opening trio of Act II. But due partly to her wooden movements and partly to the somewhat dowdy costuming (designed by James Schuette and Ashley Soliman), hers was not a seductive Carmen.
Daniel O’Hearn’s Don José likewise had a better vocal than physical characterization. A tenor of nasal brightness at the top, which could be sweetened with a dulcet mix of head voice, his ultimate descent into violent obsession never quite convinced. Perhaps this went hand in hand with the ill-advised decision by director John de los Santos to have Carmen survive the fatal stabbing at the opera’s conclusion, as if Don José were not really sincere in his murderous aims.
Soprano Amanda Batista, whose Mimi in last summer’s La Bohème proved a highlight of the entire year, returned as Micaëla, the country girl with the opera’s most affecting music. Her tone sparkled with the freshness of youth, offering robust strength at the top to electrify musical climaxes. Rarely has Don José’s choice of paramour seemed less comprehensible.
Amanda Batista was Micaëla in Carmen. Photo: Cory Weaver
Batista was reunited with Laureano Quant, the Schaunard last year, as Escamillo. The Colombian-born baritone gave the toreador ample vocal braggadocio, and his movements on stage bespoke confident swagger as well. The excellent casting continued into the four bandits (baritone Charles H. Eaton, tenor Travon D. Walker, soprano Midori Marsh, and mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner, all with other significant credits to their names this summer) who rounded out a virtuosic Act II quintet with Pfaender’s Carmen.
The compact chorus, made up of local singers rather than Wolf Trap Studio Artists as in other productions this summer, had a potent and focused sound. The alto section, in particular, stood out for the clarity and independence of their lines. A small number of singers from Children’s Chorus of Washington produced a rough, urchin-like tone, in keeping with the acting direction to make them an extremely delinquent bunch, as they robbed Micaëla and bullied others.
Conductor José Luis Gómez, presiding with confidence in his Wolf Trap debut, took his time with transitions and pauses. Some extravagantly slow tempo choices paid off, especially in Micaëla’s music, which can often feel short-changed. The Wolf Trap Orchestra, seated in the pit, produced an even sound, with especially fine contributions from oboe, flute and harp in the entr’acte before Act IV, and horns in Micaëla’s “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante” in Act III.
The production, created originally for the Glimmerglass Festival, made the mistake of many recent stagings of this opera by emphasizing brutal squalor over exotic color. The main set piece, designed by Riccardo Hernández, featured a drab wall of dirty brown, serving as the city square and cigarette factory in Act I and Lillas Pastia’s grungy inn in Act II. Large backdrops of toreadors and the Virgin Mary evoked the vibrancy of Seville in Act IV, with a colorful carpet of flowers strewn by the crowd.
To blunt the tragic ending, as director John de los Santos has done in this otherwise competent reworking, is a fatal flaw. All the heavy foreshadowing of the third act, in which Carmen repeatedly draws the card of death in the fortune-telling scene with Frasquita and Mercédès (“Toujours la mort”), was rendered ridiculous and unnecessary. It was, in the end, just a flesh wound.
Chamber Music at the Barns returns to Wolf Trap with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout in an all-Schubert program 7:30 p.m. October 9. wolftrap.org
Posted Aug 31, 2025 at 8:36 am by Elizabeth Daniels
I am SO glad you panned the ending of “Carmen” – what was John de los Santos thinking?? He ruined the end of the opera. What was supposed to have happened is so much more dramatic than what happened…a really disgusting decision in the name of “being different” – I guess. His decision for this opera was second only to his ending of Don Giovanni last year. I presume he sent the Don to heaven instead of hell. My 13 year old granddaughter ( who was waiting for that last scene) turned to me and, with a confused look on her face, anxiously asked, “Nana, what happened to the fire?” So – when you are consistently disappointing your audience I think it is a time for a change of director. I, and everyone around me, left puzzled and angry – not a good way to bring people back next year.