'Carmen' electric

CAMBRIDGE -- Grand passion is a double-edged sword in opera. Those soaring voices and million-dollar sets can transport us into a different world, where the stakes of love and death are high -- sometimes so high that they cease to be recognizable.

In contrast, the American Repertory Theatre and its fabulous friends at Theatre de la Jeune Lune in Minnesota have produced a stripped-down, two-piano version of Georges Bizet's ''Carmen" that brings that passion down to earth and then unleashes it, spreading the lust and love, violence and vengeance into the air like the forces of nature they are.

It helps to have a force of nature in the title role. You might hear a better Carmen at some point in your life than Christina Baldwin, but you'll have to search far and wide to see a better one. She takes over the Loeb Drama Center stage the way her character captures men's hearts, so assured of her power and beauty that she knows only death can stand in her way. In a performance as sensual as it is self-confident, Baldwin is by herself worth the price of admission. There's nothing wrong with her voice, either. It's strong, true, and able to strike directly at the heart of whatever Bizet and director Dominique Serrand put in her path.

Serrand, co-artistic director of Jeune Lune, brings a host of social and political concerns to the fore as he takes the spectacle, along with the scenery and the orchestra, out of this opera about a gypsy woman and the men she captivates. Serrand, who designed what little set there is in front of an exposed brick wall, presents a world that looks more like Brecht than Bizet. The soldiers are as menacing as those in ''Mother Courage," marching out and staring at the audience as if they're going to start slapping people around. There's a general sense of desperation and dislocation in Seville as the opera opens.

Thomas Derrah, as the military officer Zuniga (played by Serrand in a previous production), single-handedly conveys the sense of authoritarianism hovering over the land. Meanwhile those dirty-dancing cigarette girls, led by Carmen, are obviously selling more than tobacco to the soldiers with whom they flirt. And Micaela, an innocent young woman from the countryside, wanders into town in search of Don Jose, the soldier who is about to lose his heart, mind, and soul to Carmen.

Serrand's sensibility is as modernist as ART's, and their synergy has made their collaborations over the past few years (''The Miser," ''Amerika") highly anticipated. In this production, there's no virgin/whore dichotomy between Micaela (played and sung beautifully by Jennifer Baldwin Peden, the star's sister) and Carmen. As Micaela witnesses the action, she seems as drawn to Carmen as she is to Don Jose, or as he is to Carmen.

The director's nontraditionalist approach carries over to the casting. Bradley Greenwald is a baritone singing the tenor role of Don Jose, which opera buffs might take issue with. But once you hear the power of his voice, it's easy to see why Serrand wanted him.

Greenwald also adapted the score for two pianos. As played by the talented Barbara Brooks and Kathy Kraulik, the music deftly drives the stage action. An exception occurs when some of the more dramatic piano sections take on a Keystone Kops silliness.

In some productions of ''Carmen," Don Jose is as much the protagonist as is Carmen, done in by his libido and the gypsy's seductions as she turns to her next lover, Escamillo (Bill Murray) -- but not here. Serrand's conception and Baldwin's sensational acting, which is as subtle and smart as it is charismatic and crotch-grabbing, see to it that everyone takes a back seat to Carmen.

Her quest is for freedom, not notches on the bed, which often makes the second half of ''Carmen" problematic. Why does someone so intent on freedom and living life to the fullest suddenly become fatalistic and resigned to death?

This production doesn't completely avoid that problem, but its political overtones help make sense of her attitude. When Baldwin's Carmen sees death in the cards, it's not just gypsy superstition. Carmen's lust is to live life on her terms, and her tragedy, which you can see in Baldwin's once-sparkling eyes, is that she sees too late that those terms have never really been in her control.

But Baldwin is always in control. She and Serrand make you look, and listen, to ''Carmen" in ways you may never have before.

Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.