Entertainment

Something new for old favorites

This year may go down as one filled with surprises at the Met, kicking off with an unexpected role for a familiar tenor and a dazzling debut for a budding superstar.

The tenor is Roberto Alagna, in town for “Carmen,” who agreed on six hours’ notice to jump into Monday night’s “Tosca” when Marcelo Alvarez called in sick.

As the artist Cavaradossi, a role Alagna had never sung here before, he did more than save the show — he gave one of his finest performances in years, sounding fresh and vibrant and emoting with spontaneous charm, even spinning a mishap with a tumbling paint box into a comic cameo.

His only competition onstage was Falk Struckmann, who parlayed his big leathery bass-baritone and acting chops into a terrifying portrayal of sinister police chief Scarpia. Scary for other reasons was Sondra Radvanovsky’s first Met Tosca, sung flat and evoking all the tragic grandeur of a Real Housewife of New Jersey.

Conductor Marco Armiliato’s slo-mo tempos allowed plenty of time to observe the tweaks director Luc Bondy made to his loudly booed 2009 production. Where Scarpia once disrupted Mass by dry-humping a statue of the Virgin Mary, he now merely nudges the effigy as if to say “How you doin’?”

The production is now as timid as Richard Eyre’s “Carmen,” which also returned from last season. But last Wednesday, that staging was electrified by the star power and sultry singing of Anita Rachvelishvili in her Met debut as Bizet’s gypsy.

At 26 — a tween in opera years — she boasts a big, vibrant mezzo and a magnetic stage persona that’s a hybrid of Anna Magnani and pre-rhinoplasty Cher. Even Alagna, in superb form as her lover Don Jose, barely held his own against this diva of tomorrow.

More surprises popped up elsewhere that night when Met stalwarts Hei-Kyung Hong and Dwayne Croft subbed for yet more ailing artists.

The soprano chirped prettily enough as good-girl Micaela, but Croft, the baritone who replaced Broadway hunk Paulo Szot as Escamillo on short notice, won an ovation for his muscular, assured “Toreador Song.”

Though “Carmen” closes for the season tomorrow night, “Tosca” continues for a dozen performances through April 16 — probably with a few more surprises along the way.