Bizet's feisty, alluring and colorful heroine Carmen so dominates his popular opera of the same name that it's easy to forget just how dangerous her life is in the story set around 1830 in Spain.

Her work in a cigarette factory in Seville is a front for her involvement with a rugged band of gypsy smugglers. The good-natured and distracted soldiers who inhabit the town square are at war. Even Carmen's constant flirting, expressed in her famous "Habanera" aria, serves this criminal life -- seducing custom officers and other authorities that stand in the way.

But just how much does an audience need to be reminded of this context when watching "Carmen," an opera known for its parade of memorable arias and choruses such as "Toreador Song"? That's at the crux of an intriguing new Pittsburgh Opera production of that opened Saturday night at the Benedum Center. Amid gritty scenery from Austin Lyric Opera, stage director Eric Einhorn laid out the brutal elements of the plot and achieved fantastic acting by the cast led by mezzo-soprano Kate Aldrich as Carmen and tenor Roger Honeywell as her lover, Don Jose.

When Carmen calls for her smuggler friends to help Don Jose in a tavern fight with his superior, Zuniga (the capable bass Liam Moran), in a flash guns are pointed menacingly at the officer. Later, as the scene ends, the smugglers execute him with a shot to the head. This was a "wow" moment -- certainly not seen in traditional productions, but it is essentially what happens to Zuniga. The bandits can't afford to have an army officer know their hideout. The detail-minded Mr. Einhorn had almost Tarantino-like penchant for violence -- literally showing the audience how Carmen had cut the forehead of a fellow worker and having Don Jose slash her throat in the finale scene. These things are in the plot, but showing each so blatantly distracted rather than added to the effect of the opera.

Opera has never been a medium of realism, not even "Carmen" (1875), an opera that helped spawn the "verismo" genre that Pucinni, Leoncavallo and Mascagni developed. Because characters tell the story through song, fantasy has always been opera's canvas. Sometimes excellent acting (aided by naturalistic choreography by Attack Theatre) only exposes the holes of operatic plots.

Likewise, Ms. Aldrich and Mr. Honeywell had chemistry that was every bit the level of a romantic film. She exuded a fiery spirit, and he followed Don Jose's descent into obsession as if he were a method actor. Yet, again, opera is about singing. You could have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in these roles and they wouldn't match the effect of two voices in perfect tandem.

Ms. Aldrich, who trained as a Pittsburgh Opera Resident Artist about 10 years ago, has an ample, rich and sultry voice, and Mr. Honeywell has an able vehicle for emotional expression. But the two were sometimes vocally tentative and didn't mesh. Duets were often detached, and I got the feeling that Ms. Aldrich was holding back through much of the opera. There were times I wanted her to be that Carmen diva and take over.

The rest of the cast also was often too modest in delivery even as it was nailed many a scene theatrically. Mr. Moran's bass voice was splendidly sardonic, Katherine Drago (Mercedes) and Shannon Kessler Dooley (Frasquita) played Carmen's confidantes with swagger and attractive timbre of their own, and Kelly Markgraf (Escamillo the bullfighter) was dashing, although he could hardly be heard. Yali-Marie Williams' Micaela stood out as being a more traditional model -- not comfortable with acting (trying too hard), but able to take on the entire audience by herself in her Act III aria (although it was far too slow).

The orchestra, led by music director Antony Walker, was especially on target in the tutti sections. It showed why the talented Mr. Walker has been tapped to guest at the Metropolitan Opera next year. Chorus master Mark Trawka will be following him soon, judging from the way he had the adults and children of this production singing with utmost precision and liveliness.

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.