WALNUT CREEK - The damn wooden bowl got away from Buffy Baggott tonight
at a most inconvenient moment.

The awesome young mezzo - with a superb medium-to-low range, singing every
note on the money, sporting true theatrical flair and movie-star looks -
was in the middle of a triumphant performance in the title role of Peter
Brook's "La Tragedie de Carmen." The Festival Opera premiere, in company
director Olivia Stapp's production, was firing on all cylinders.

"How stupid of me!" Carmen exploded in anger about wasting her time on a
loser as Don Jose told her that returning to the barracks had priority over
dallying with her.  She smashed the two wooden bowls used to accompany her
dance to the ground.  One bowl stayed where it was meant to be, the other
took a mighty bounce and took off in the direction of the orchestra pit.
Maintaining the vocal phrase perfectly, Baggott flew through the air in
pursuit of the bowl.

At the lip of the stage, Baggott stopped - barely.  The bowl didn't.

A woman's cry rose from the orchestra as the bowl bounced off a violinist.
Baggott stopped singing, peering into the pit with great concern and
said something that sounded like "Excuse moi." Music director Michael
Morgan froze in mid-motion, the orchestra stopped playing.  (After the
performance, Morgan explained that he has a special cue for "incoming!" but
he didn't see the object until it was too late.) Most curiously, the person
in charge of the supertitles (which usually roll on and on, regardless of
what happens) instantly stopped the projection, leaving the "How stupid of
me!" frame up on the screen.

"Let's start from before that measure," Baggott told Morgan.  And the
performance continued.  And everybody went one notch better than before.

The episode was not the most memorable thing about tonight - far from it.
The white-heat intensity, the all-around excellence, yes, those will
eclipse the memory of Mrs. Garcia beaning a violinist.

The fact that Carmen is married to a man named Garcia is just one of the
Brook production's peculiarities, although that was picked up from either
the Merimee novella or one of the original libretti.  Excuse the Teutonic
paragraph that follows, there is too much to tell in the form of
conservative parsing.

Other startling developments from the production that's old hat in Europe,
but new to these parts, are surely Brook's own: no overture, no children's
chorus (praise be!), no "revolting cigaret-makeresses," Carmen cuts Micaela
(Kristin Clayton, singing beautifully, but returning to the stage later
face untouched), Don Jose (Brandon Jovanovich, tall, strong, handsome, and
in process of becoming a great tenor) picks up Zuniga and throttles him to
death in midair, Garcia (acted by TBA, according to the program) shows up
and gets hacked to death (offstage) by Don Jose, and - the most inspired
touch of all - the bull kills Escamillo (Philip Skinner, in a vocal treat)
- allowing Carmen to invite death for no practical reason, leading to the
stunning finale, Don Jose's kabuki-style knifing of Carmen, in silence.
Take breath.

Coming just a month after the Berkeley Opera's re-interpretation of Bizet's
work, with David Scott Marley's probing and memorable new English-language
libretto, the East Bay now has the title of "Different Carmen" world
headquarters.

But here's the bottom line about the Walnut Creek "Tragedie": unlike
Berkeley, unlike some European productions of the Brook version, this is
a wonderful music-theater experience - challenging, intense, gripping,
a fusion of music and action, making the one-act, 80-minute performance
something to cherish.  Giulio Cesare Perrone's severe and highly functional
unit set is a prison that serves every scene well - without making any
token changes.

Morgan produced a low-key, consistent, transparent sound from his
14-instrument orchestra, making this amazing chamber-music version really
"sing." Problems from the first violin and horn in the beginning were
well compensated by sterling performances from cellist Dan Reiter, flutist
Michelle Caimotto, and - especially - pianist John Florencio.  Beyond such
surprising changes as replacing the overture with a five-minute flamenco
solo in silence, Brook's most startling idea is what he does with the score
in the finale.  As the unseen Escamillo enters the bullring, the orchestra
remains silent and a recording is played through the loudspeakers (it's a
super-lush Bernstein performance), then the piano takes over, joined by
other instruments later, until the tragedy ends in silence.  Right or wrong
- it's really "something else" and, definitely, something to hear.

Janos Gereben/SF
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