Carmen on the Common' typifies Boston's diversity

"If I love you, do not spurn me!" Carmen belted across a crowd of an estimated 60,000-75,000 people this past weekend. Her perfectly articulated arias reached across men and women, college students and children _ even caressing the ears of hot-dog venders on the periphery of the Common and the trucks barreling down Boylston Street. Chosen for of its diverse cast, "Carmen on the Common" certainly drew a diverse crowd to the Boston hillside.

After a summer of hosting over 40 education and preview programs in the Boston area, the Boston Lyric Opera presented its culminating project "Carmen on the Common." The timeless opera was produced on a fully equipped stage sitting proudly in the middle of the Boston Common, just blocks from the Park Street T-stop. The free show _ and the BLO's persistent advertisement throughout the summer _ attracted both novice and experienced opera-goers alike with their picnic blankets.

Whether they clad in jeans and t-shirts eating hot dogs from the numerous vendors, or donning ball gowns and unpacking their own wine and cheese, spectators lounged on chairs and each other as they watched one of the world's most celebrated operas of all time, most of them by way of a giant screen a few hundred yards from the stage.

The speaker system was loud enough without being piercing, but watching the opera entirely onscreen (as the majority of viewers had to do) felt a bit like coming into Boston to watch PBS and eat a sausage sandwich. Further diminishing the thrill was the fact that the show was performed entirely in English and squeezed into auxiliary subtitles on the giant screen.

These two features brought the beautiful and esoteric language of the opera down to a made-for-TV-audiences level which, while good for novices, detracted a bit from the true opera "experience."

The voices and the orchestra were truly spectacular. Josie P?©rez (Carmen) had the perfect voice for her seductive character. It could be lilting and fine when she was enticing Don Jose to free her from jail, or it could be deep and rich when she was insisting that he not return to his barracks.

The voices of her co-stars, Guiping Deng (Mica?la), and Robert Honeysucker (Escamillo), were strong and bold as well, but they did not match the passion and tenderness in P?©rez's voice in pitch or tonal quality.

The sensuality of Carmen's voice was accompanied beautifully by one ever-present aspect of the show: the set. Upstage, there was a balcony flanked by staircases leading downstage, and change of scenery was affected not through pictures but through color. Sheer sheets of various colors constituted the primary back-drop for the entire show. In one scene, the sheet was crimson to create the ambiance of passion and danger; in another scene, it was blue to represent the sadness of Don Jos?©'s at his mother dying.

Subtle and tasteful, these touches were practical for an outdoor stage. Unfortunately, one couldn't see much of nuances on the television screen, which focused on the characters the entire time and never zoomed out to show the beautiful set.

Each half of the show was colloquially introduced by the producers, who geared their commentary specifically towards new spectators of the opera. They seemed to be working for a level of comfort among tense audience members. Lying on the grass in jeans, however, the audience seemed much more at ease at the opera than the producers onstage, who were dressed in ball gowns and full tuxedos. The colloquialisms they employed in revving the audience for the second half of the show (such as "Half-time is over!") were rather hokey but were received warmly nonetheless.

And aside from the heart-stopping moment when Don Jose murders Carmen in a fit of jealous rage, one of the most memorable speeches of the evening was when Boston Mayor Thomas Menino welcomed the audience, by way of pre-recorded video, to the show in a perfect Boston accent, so that the words "Carmen" and "Common" sounded almost exactly the same