Today my friends and I saw Elina Garanca sing the title role of Carmen as it was performed on stage at the Metropolitan Opera. We were not fortunate to be at the Met to see her perform live, but the HD broadcast to a movie theater in a small town in Virginia was the next best thing to being there. It was like having a front row seat for $22.  She was fabulous.  All the write-ups in the NY Times and the WSJ by music critics raved about her performance.  She would have made Bizet proud. She was so earthy, sultry and sexy and her rich mezzo had the Met audience on their feet with many ovations. We even applauded in the movie theater. 
During the intermission, Renee Fleming interviewed the stars and asked Elina and her French tenor if they wanted to send a greeting back home in their own languages. Both did and Elina spoke in Latvian and sent her love and best wishes to her parents and to all her fans in Latvia.
Also, during the intermissions we, in the theater, got glimpses of all the activity that takes place backstage during the scene changes. 
There are still three operas to be broadcast before the season ends:  Simon Boccanegra;Hamlet and
Armida.  If you cannot be at the Met, these HD broadcasts are great.

Arija—I’m so happy you got to see Carmen with Elina Garanca.  A few years ago I represented a digital cinema production company.  One of the stock PR points we used was “You will have a better viewing and total opera experience in our digitally-equipped theaters than 80 percent of the opera goers.”  Sounds like you might agree….

I had the the pleasure of seeing Elina Garanca at the Riga Opera House a while back in a production of Carmen that the director created specifically with her in mind for the leading part.

An excerpt from my travel journal:

“I ended my very hectic trip to Riga with an unforgettable night at the Opera. The production was Carmen as set in modern post-soviet Cuba, with Elina Garanca in the title role. The idea came to the director, Andrejs Zhagars, after a visit to Cuba, where he witnessed firsthand the grim reality of a failed marxist economy with its ration cards, endless lines, kommunalki, crumbling infrastructure, crappy soviet cars, ugly concrete public works, and said: Hey, I remember all this when I was growing up in Riga. And he very cleverly reproduced it on stage.”

ak

Bravo, Elīna Garanča! Garanča is a multitalanted performer - singer, actress, dancer. It was a pleasure to see her Carmen in the Met HD performance yesterday. Garanča bija šķelmīga, viltīga, zādzīga, seksīga čigāniete.

I also saw Carmen in Rīga a few years ago in the Cuban setting, but Garanča did not play the title role. It was played by a short, old, heavy set actress, dressed in short shorts. Very disappointing performance. I had seen better in Rīga.

Lauris

I’m glad, too, Arija that you got to see Elina/Carmen!

And very entertaining posts, comments to follow.  Ah, how sad the fate of many an aging actress, performer—never too young, too thin :-7

Irena