A Brilliant Director

Carmen, composed by George Bizet, adapted and directed by Louisa Proske. Heartbeat Opera, New York, May 21–28, 2017.

I WOULD NOT normally seek out a small-scale production of Carmen performed in the tiniest and deepest of Baruch College’s basement auditoriums. It’s certainly not one of my favorite operas. Though I’ve rarely seen live versions of this eternally popular piece, the music nonetheless seems overly familiar, and the equally clichéd plot (exotic hotblooded Spanish gypsy dies for love) has always held less than zero appeal. But I knew something in advance about this particular production. I knew it was directed by Louisa Proske.

I first encountered Proske’s work last fall, when I happened to attend LoftOpera’s at a warehouse in Bushwick. , like , is an opera I’ve grown wary of, though for entirely different reasons. The music is superb, possibly even better than in any of Mozart’s other operas, but that only makes the cruelty of the plot more noticeable, and more despicable. The central device involves the purposeful rematch of two pairs of lovers, with the male suitors, Ferrando and Guglielmo, manipulated and controlled by a malicious figure named Don Alfonso, while the female halves of each couple, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, are egged on by their maid Despina. In the end, the opera proves to its own satisfaction that women “all do that,” as the title would have it—that every faithless