For the second time this season, the Metropolitan Opera has replaced a large-scale Franco Zeffirelli production of a repertory standard with a lower-key restudied version. The Luc Bondi-Richard Peduzzi "Tosca," which opened the season and weds gratuitous sensationalism to drab trappings, has been justly condemned as an unworthy successor to Zeffirellli's monumental "Tosca." The new "Carmen," which succeeds Zeffirelli's busy one, makes for a much more satisfying reconsideration, save for one grievous miscalculation at the climax, than the "Tosca" does. Theater and film's Richard Eyre's Met debut production of composer Georges Bizet and librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy's popular "Carmen," with designs by Rob Howell (debut), lighting by Peter Mumford, and choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, opened on New Year's Eve and I heard it on January 5, at its second of 14 scheduled outings.

In this essentially fresh, unhackneyed retelling of the colorful, tragic love story, after Prosper Mérimée's novella, the action unfolds within concentric or overlapping semi-circles of brick, in ruins, with archways cut into them that allow for views beyond the immediate playing areas. The action is updated by a century, to the Spanish Civil War era, with no appreciable harm to the opera's integrity. Bizet's thrice-familiar score, with the unfortunate, syrupy recitatives by Ernest Guiraud intact, is treated to a lively realization, guided by Canadian newcomer Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Most cast members are also new to their roles here.

Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča is the fresh, full-voiced, and ever-vibrant new Carmen. She is rightly the focus of our attention from the time she emerges from the lower level of the unseen cigarette factory, soaking her feet in a bucket and spitting out pieces of an apple, as she sumptuously sings the Habanera. All eyes are on her, except, of course, those of Roberto Alagna, returning to the role of the corporal, Don José, so she zeroes in on him, singing directly to him, until he turns to face her, making her set her sights on his captain, Zuniga (Keith Miller), instead. When she throws the fateful cassia flower at José, he is forced to kneel before her to retrieve it.

When Micaëla (Barbara Frittoli, returning to role of her 1995 Met debut) enters the fenced-in quarters of the horny soldiers, in the first scene, we fear that she risks being raped. When Carmen, under arrest, comes into the same 'cage,' it is not she who is in danger. In her bright Séguedille, complete with interpolated high note introducing the repeat of its A section, Garanča controls the rope ostensibly meant to hold her captive, wielding it like a lasso, as she holds José in place with her bloodied leg-showing that she did not come out unscathed from her scuffle with her co-worker, Manuelita-and they end up in an embrace. As the leader, with the rope, in lieu of the led, she pushes Zuniga down and makes her escape from José and hides, laughing, behind a column, eluding the soldiers.

At Lillas Pastia's tavern-its walls adorned with bulls' horns with matadors' capes hanging from them, looking, at first glance, like pagan idols- a troupe of Spanish dancers, and Elizabeth Caballero and Sandra Piques Eddy, as Carmen's friends, Frasquita and Mercédès, assist Garanča in making the Chanson bohème, at the start of Act Two, into a show-stopping production number. Having captured the hearts of Zuniga, his fellow officer Morales (Trevor Scheunemann), and the toreador Escamillo (Mariusz Kwiecien) in succession, Garanča's Carmen becomes an unbridled fury when José, still the dutiful soldier, would abandon her after she has danced for him alone, and she kicks him and throws pieces of his uniform at him. When they are locked in embrace, on the floor, once again, it is she, significantly, who is on top.

Sometime between the end of Act Two, when Carmen savors José's becoming an outlaw and joining the band of smugglers, and the beginning of Act Three, in an icy mountain pass, the semi-circles describing a natural amphitheater, Carmen has clearly tired of him. Garanča proves commanding even when sitting stock still, brooding, and employing the lowest reaches of and darkest colors in her voice, in the card scene. When Micaëla comes to the smuggler's lair to bring José home to his dying mother, Garanča makes it plain that she now finds her erstwhile lover risible.

At the Met, Don José has been sung by the most dramatic of tenors, Jon Vickers and James McCracken, and the most lyric, bel canto's Nicolai Gedda. Alagna, fortunately, takes a lyrical approach to the role, singing the endings of the duet with Frittoli's Micaëla-a peaceful contrast, infused with tenderness, to Carmen's smoldering Habanera immediately preceding it-and of his beautiful Flower Song in quiet high head tone. He joins Frasquita and the sopranos on the high note at the end of Act Two. Alagna's José has to be forcibly restrained, by the smugglers and gypsies, from blowing Zuniga's brains out, after he sees his superior making advances toward Carmen, foreshadowing his third act brawl with her new suitor, Escamillo, which ends with his being similarly restrained. Alagna's singing remains relatively unforced, even in the heftiest passages, at the end of Act Three and in Act Four. A broken man, wearing a prominent crucifix, in the final scene, he begins by blessing or crossing himself before he and Carmen address each other and, after stabbing her, holds her almost tenderly, as she dies in his arms. In the major final faux pas, which demands to be fixed, attention shifts from Carmen and José, outside the bullring, to its crowded interior, where Escamillo stands over the bull he just felled.

Frittoli shows us the strength of the mild-mannered Micaëla, able to fend off predatory soldiers in their barracks, and brave enough to make her way to the smugglers' remote lair-led there, unusually, by a woman guide-where she is treated roughly before she can state her purpose. Frittoli invests her aria, "Je dis que rien me m'épouvante" (I say that nothing frightens me), with passion.

Baritone Kwiecien makes a most dashing, vocally polished Escamillo. Singing Carmen's colleagues, Frasquita, Mercédès, Dancaïre (Earle Patriarco), and Remendado (Keith Jamerson) are, aptly, all singers with experience in leading roles. Remendado's gayness, pointed up in a production introduced here in 1972, is subtly alluded to during the ensemble "Quant au douanier, c'est notre affaire" (As for the customs man, he is our business), when Carmen withdraws from the dance and pushes Dancaïre and Remendado together-the former is dismayed, but not the latter. When Carmen listens dreamily to Escamillo's reprise of the Toreador Song, Dancaïre tosses work her way, giving her a look of disgust, as if to say she has wasted enough of the smugglers' time already with her moody Don José.

Dancers Ashley Tuttle and a bare-chested Keith Roberts, making Met debuts, gracefully reenact the tale of Carmen and José's love and lust, during the Fate motif, in the prelude, and the entr'acte between Acts Two and Three. During their chorus, the children mock, rather than pay homage to, the guard changing in Act One, and return to participate in the Toreador Song, when we don't expect them, and the march to the corrida, when we do.

Repetitions of "Carmen," now given with just one intermission, are on January 8, 12, 21 and 27 at 8 p.m., 16 at 1 p.m., and 30 at 8:30 p.m.; February 1, 5, 9, and 13 at 8 p.m.; April 28 at 8 p.m.; and May 1 at 8:30 p.m. Nézet-Séguin passes the baton to Alain Altinoglu (debut) beginning on January 27, when Olga Borodina begins her run of Carmens and Brandon Jovanovich (debut), his run of Don Josés. Angela Gheorghiu-the originally scheduled Carmen, whom Garanča replaced-and Jonas Kaufman take over the protagonists' parts for the final two hearings, when Eve Gigliotti (debut) and Richard Bernstein assume the roles of Mercédès and Zuniga. Maija Kovalevska succeeds Frittoli, beginning on January 30. Teddy Tahu Rhodes is Escamillo on February 9 and 13. Scott Scully sings Remendado from January 27 through February 13 and Liam Bonner (debut) is Morales, beginning on February 9. For remaining tickets, priced from $15 to 375, telephone 212/362-6000, visit www.metopera.org, or go the Met box office at Lincoln Center. Rush tickets, for $20, are available at the box office on the day of performance, from Monday through Thursday.