It pays off for director Paul Curran’s production to lean into this femme-fatalism, as the 1950s details of McCann’s design, backed by a moody purple sunset carving out silhouettes of palm trees, nod towards film noir. (Carmen can charmingly escape arrest, and slip rope restraints onto your wrist when you’re not looking). Various choruses come and go, turning the corners of set designer Gary McCann’s vast structures, to witness the corporeal Don José (Dinyar Vania) abandon his congenial wife and career when he is captured by another woman. The streets and buildings do stretch wide in Carmen’s universe, as Irish National Opera’s mega co-production with Opera Philadelphia and Seattle Opera shows the expense to match. Murrihy jolts every movement and vocal note with moxie, as Carmen sings to her mesmerised audience below. When floating through the entrancing aria “Habanera,” she climbs a gigantic billboard and tears down a poster displaying a grinning woman with red lipstick, taking the titan’s place.
Any production could be cloying in its emphasis on Carmen’s superiority, especially if the character were given to anyone less charismatic than Paula Murrihy. In a hot, humid version of Seville as a garrison town, where women from the local factory blow cigarette smoke at adoring soldiers, everyone is in agreement that Carmen is extraordinary. There is a lot stacked in Georges Bizet’s opéra comique. Spelling out thoughts about desire with playful gestures and wide-eyed expressions, you could easily miss a line that sounds like a threat. “If I love you, look out,” sings Carmen, a woman surrounded by dozens of admirers in a town square.
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