In the classic Toscanini recording of “Otello,” there is a wonderful scene where children surround the innocent Desdemona and sing slightly off-key. This background is particularly poignant with the ingenue, Herva Nelli, a great character actress who used her high-pitched but low-toned soprano for maximum dramatic impact. One can envision the maestro smiling beatifically as he directed this moment from studio 8H here in New York.

“Carmen,” too, has such a scene. It was a highlight on Saturday evening at the premiere of this season’s run at City Opera. The children quite literally invade the Seville square in this Jonathan Eaton production, running wild and disrupting the ordered world of the military and the factory. Anthony Piccolo is the director of this chorus, and he very skillfully trained his charges in the fine art of inexactitude; their intonation is mostly correct but always just slightly askew. Director Cynthia Edwards and choreographer Daryl Gray are also to be commended for this scene: The children perform their mock march in the most grave military style, except for one, much smaller than the rest, who seems to look out at the audience just a little too long before getting caught up in the totentanz parody. This charming miniature expression of machismo highlights the rest of the carnage of “Carmen” in ironic bas-relief.

For this scene to be effective as bathos, however, the remainder of the performance must be of a superior quality. But this “Carmen” fell flat. A lackluster reading of the overture established the mood. Conductor Gary Thor Wedow sloughed over the normally colorful and exciting crescendi and presented a flaccid Fate motif. “Carmen” has not done well on the Plaza this season. The Met mounted an enervated effort this fall that squandered the talents of both James Levine and Olga Borodina. Where that realization was turgid, this one was tepid.

Not that there weren’t bright spots in the City Opera version. The company was spry, if not inspired. The big dance number at Pastia’s tavern was suitably sweaty and, compared to the lead-footed disaster surrounding Ms. Borodina, looked as agile and feathery as Cirque du Soleil. Some of the minor characters also did a fine job, including Tonna Miller as Frasquita, Kathryn Friest as Mercedes, and especially Kyungmook Yum in the role of Dancairo. But you know that something is terribly wrong when one of the smugglers has a much more resonant voice that the Escamillo.

Debut artist Malcolm MacKenzie had a bad entrance in the “Couplets du Toreador” and never really recovered. Not only is his voice thin, but he suffered from audible breathing at highly questionable moments. Maybe this famous aria is not quite as cruel as “Celeste Aida,” but it has always had a notorious reputation as a difficult piece to perform so early in your role. Hopefully, Mr. Mackenzie’s problems can be attributed to opening night jitters. The other male star was also having his City Opera unveiling and he fared only slightly better. John Bellemer appears to have a solid command of his range, but his instrument is not very interesting or well-developed. Any sense of acting with his voice was nonexistent. Don Jose is an awfully emotional character to present so dispassionately. But again this may be the result of first night caution.

Melanie Vaccari appeared to have the finest voice of the evening. Her Micaela was sweet and pure, the soprano part centered if not soaring. Problem was we could barely hear her. It is refreshing to note that the company has toned down or perhaps even turned off the amplification. Note to management: Please keep the electronics packed away; we will make the effort to listen more closely going forward. This puts more pressure on the artists to make themselves intelligible, however.

Finally, the Carmen of Katharine Goeldner was a bit of a mystery. Her voice may not be spectacular, but it was adequate. She was perfectly audible and, within a limited range, competently accurate and exhibiting dead-on pitch. Her dancing was fine, her dialogue crisp, her believability beyond question. But she put virtually no spice into the role. Who else would bother to sing the Habanera or Seguidilla with such little fire? To their credit, the audience treated her in a decidedly lukewarm manner.

During the depths of the Great Depression, Tallulah Bankhead encountered a uniformed Salvation Army bellringer on the street. After being thanked for her generous contribution, Miss Tallulah replied, “that’s okay dahling, it’s been a bad year for flamenco dancers.”

***

Pity the people of Montreal. Not only are their orchestral musicians currently wearing union T-shirts instead of black tie at concerts, but, having just landed a big fish in Kent Nagano as their new music director, they are already hearing the rumor that he will be abandoning them in favor of the soon to be vacant conductor’s chair in Chicago. Mr. Nagano was Olivier Messiaen’s personal choice to assist Seiji Ozawa in preparing the world premiere of the opera “Saint Francois d’Assise,” and so came to Thursday’s concert of the New York Philharmonic carrying an impressive resume.

The central work of the evening was Messiaen’s “Eclairs sur l’Au-Dela,” normally translated as “Illuminations of the Beyond.” Its world premiere was given by Zubin Mehta and the Philharmonic in that orchestra’s 150th anniversary season of 1992. I was not in attendance, but did hear Mr. Mehta conduct the Turangalila Symphony with the composer and wife Yvonne Loriod in the audience on the occasion of Messiaen’s 80th birthday in 1988. Mr. Mehta, like Mr. Ozawa, has a way with this polychromatic and polyrhythmic music.

It is not the Catholic mysticism nor even the ornithology that keeps this music unintelligible for many listeners, but rather the composer’s insistent rejection of the basic classical principle of development. In Messiaen, the individual sonic moment is everything. There is no sense of points “a” or “b,” no easy frames of reference, no concept of time. When your subject is paradise, you don’t need a map.

A Messiaen concert at the Phil is like a game of musical chairs, only in reverse. At the end of every movement, more and more empty seats appear. Yet those of us who stayed until the end were feted with some of the better playing of the season. Mr. Nagano, whose conducting style includes keeping track of instrumental combinations on his fingers, was exceptional in his layering of color throughout.

The “Appearance of Christ in Glory” is the most otherworldly brass chorale since Bruckner, not surprising since both of these composers were cathedral organists by trade. The transition between movements is often flute choirs ad libitum, shrill and arhythmic, winged creatures journeying toward the celestial, reminiscent of that other solo flute in that other Easter work, Mahler’s “Resurrection.”

“The Path of the Invisible” was a frozen moment of infinite depth, the illusion powerfully created by employing the contrabassoon. And when there’s a xylorimba and a wind machine on stage, it’s going to be a bumpy night. Each effect depends on solid but flexible timbral feel, and Mr. Nagano brought out the best that this often less articulate ensemble has to offer. Perhaps the most impressive tone painting was reserved for the strings: “And God Will Wipe Away Every Tear from Their Eyes” was ethereally drawn and quite correctly temporally vague.

I offer here without comment one more observation gleaned from years of listening to the Philharmonic: When virtually all of the first chair players and section leaders are absent, as they were this holiday weekend, the orchestra invariably sounds better.

“Carmen” will be performed again March 31 at 7:30 p.m.; April 2 at 8 p.m.; and April 9, 17 & 24 at 1:30 p.m. (Lincoln Center, 212-307-4100).