While its current season features well-loved, decades-old productions of La Bohème, Turandot and Tannhäuser, the Metropolitan Opera’s New Year’s Eve gala previewed the opening of the company’s sixth stab at Carmen since it moved to Lincoln Center in 1966. Notable directors Jean-Louis Barrault, Sirs Peter Hall and Richard Eyre, plus Met favorite Franco Zeffirelli, have each failed to bring the production the lasting success it desires. For its 1025th Carmen this past Sunday night, Peter Gelb turned to Carrie Cracknell, but her much ballyhooed feminist updating of Bizet’s perennial crowd-pleaser about a free-spirited gypsy and her jealous lover emerged flashy and empty.

In an unspecified southern U.S. locale, Michael Levine’s first act set offered a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire protecting three austere truck bays where feisty factory girls in Tom Scott’s Pepto-Bismol-colored smocks fended off arms smugglers and inattentive guards, including Don José. The huge full-sized truck that hosted Carmen’s banging “Chanson Bohème” in the second act was turned on its side for the third: a striking, if nonsensical, image.

Directing only her second opera, Cracknell didn’t trust herself and often resorted to distracting gimmicks. From the first act finale on, Guy Hoare’s huge sea of flashing neon light strips frequently shifted colors before settling into blinding white for the final fatal confrontation. Escamillo and his entourage drove on in cars that limited stage machinery ordained could only........

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