Carmen, the MTV Diva

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Though the company billed its new Carmen as the next best thing to a rock concert, the results were closer in style to a rip-roaring Broadway show, an impression strengthened by the use of Bizet's original opera-comique version, in which the dialogue is spoken rather than sung, and a refreshingly colloquial English translation by Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof). Updated it was, but dumbed down it wasn't. Assaf made her dramatic points with crisp simplicity and no pandering whatsoever. No less direct was the Carmen of mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman, a fire-eating singing actress who played straight to the video cameras, giving a devastatingly sexy performance full of anger and pride. It all added up to a no-nonsense Carmen that anybody could believe in.

Houston has funding for four more years of outdoor productions, though no operas have been set yet. Next January the stage will be moved indoors for a production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, starring Frederica von Stade. Several other opera houses have expressed interest in this new approach, and no doubt similar stages will soon be under construction. But the best thing about Houston's contemporary Carmen is not so much the modular stage, impressive though it is, as what Assaf has done with it. How do you get twentysomethings to fall for opera? The answer is the same now as it was a century ago: make it real.