Carmen, Royal Academy Opera, 19 November 2025

Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Images: Craig Fuller

Carmen – Charlotte Clapperton
Don José – Woogyeom Kim
Micaëla – Madeleine Perring
Escamillo – Harrison Robb
Zuniga – Theodore McAlindon
Moralès – Alexander Hopkins
Frasquita – Abigail Sinclair
Mercédès – Amy Porter
Remendado – Joseph Hancock
Dancaire – Joel Robson
Lillas Pastia – Joshua Furtado-Mendes

Director – Harry Fehr
Designs – Yannis Thavoris
Lighting – Jake Wilshire
Video – Matt Powell
Movement – Victoria Newlyn

Royal Academy Opera Chorus

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Christopher White (conductor)

A few rays of Andalusian sun would not go amiss right now in the dark, dismal, last half of November. Short of that, Carmen at the Royal Academy offered an alternative: quite an undertaking even for an enterprising conservatoire opera scheme. Given the ways in which voices develop, ‘big’ nineteenth-century repertoire – the description begs questions, yet still holds – tends to be avoided in student performance. Just as young professional voices tend for the most part to steer away from Verdi and Wagner in favour of Mozart, early music, and some modernist repertoire, so do they from Carmen. One can debate whether that is a good thing. Many factors come into play, not least the desire to gain experience in roles for which they might be asked to audition. It made for a nice surprise, then, when the Royal Academy named Carmen as its end-of-term show, all the more so when given with such confidence by all concerned. 

A smaller theatre helped, of course; when does it not? But there was nothing intrinsically small-scale to the performances; rather, they felt suited to the venue. Intimate, perhaps, but only in the sense that the RAM’s Susie Sainsbury Theatre benefits from its size in enabling all to see and hear the performances at relatively close range. Carmen may be an opéra-comique – as we arguably inform ourselves a little too much – but it generally plays to large houses, is performed by large forces, and Bizet was going to write those orchestral recitatives himself anyway for Vienna, death meaning that they instead were composed by his friend Ernest Guiraud. Tragedy need not be large-scale, but this is no piece of froth. Christopher White and the Royal Academy Sinfonia may likewise have been small in scale (strings 4.4.3.3.2) but they did not come across as such, whether in dash, vigour, or a sheen that would have put many a larger (and older) orchestra to shame. White’s pacing of the four acts stressed dramatic immediacy without ever sounding rushed, offering space where needed. This is an opera of the moment, though, and sounded as such. 

Don José (Woogweom Kim) and Carmen (Charlotte Clapperton)

As is generally the case, a mixture of orchestral recitative and dialogue was used, wisely cut, given length and the difficulties of speaking as well as singing in French. Just as in a larger house, some found the language more of a challenge than others, but there was some genuine excellence in that respect and nothing too grievous. If French dialogue was not tenor Woogweom Kim’s greatest strength, it came and went, and vocally he truly came into his own in the second act, a Don José of ardour and vulnerability in tandem. Charlotte Clapperton’s Carmen surely revealed a star in the making: growing like her co-star, fully holding the stage as any Carmen must, through voice and dramatic presence. Madeleine Perring’s sweetly sung Micaëla and Harrison Robb’s already dark Escamillo made much of their roles, as indeed did the rest of the cast, including an enterprising, accomplished chorus depleted by seasonal ailments yet never sounding like it. 

Harry Fehr’s production updated the action and made the occasional nod to contemporary mores. Micaëla’s bag made it clear she was no fun of bull-fighting, which seemed very much in character. It told the story straightforwardly, highlighting in interesting fashion the crucial role of fate, alternative paths portrayed on video, without distracting from the principal action. Once again, then, an excellent evening of opera at the Royal Academy.

Carmen, Deutsche Oper, 26 October 2023

Carmen – Aigul Akhmetshina
Don José – David Butt Philip
Micaëla – Maria Motolygina
Escamillo – Byung Gil Kim
Zuniga – Christian Simmons
Moralès – Dean Murphy
Frasquita – Meechot Marrero
Mercédès – Arianna Manganello
Dancaïro – Artur Garbas
Remendado – Kieran Carrel
Lillas Pastia – Dean Street
Mercédès’s daughter – Fatima Hammad

Ole Anders Tandberg (directo)
Erlend Birkeland (set designs)
Maria Geber (costumes)
Ellen Ruge (lighting)
Silke Sense (choreography)

Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Jeremy Bines) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Ben Glassberg (conductor)

Images from 2018 original production with different cast: © Marcus Lieberenz

Hmmm. I think I could see, some of the time, what Ole Anders Tandberg was trying to do in his 2018 Deutsche Oper production of Carmen. There were some reasonable ideas, some less so, and some that were frankly terrible. Next to Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliant reimagining of the work for Aix the previous year, though, this did not really pass muster. If you like gruesome imagery with unfortunate (I assume they were accidental) racist overtones, this may be for you. If not, even something more ’traditional’ is likely to prove a better bet than this. 

The curtain confronting us on entrance to the theatre, sets the tone: a bloody scene, involving what must have been the gouged eye of a bull. Once the curtain rises, the bullring (Iberia, not Birmingham) is centre stage, and proves to be the only setting for the entire thing: either inside, the arena suggestive of an amphitheatre, or outside (as one would expect for the fourth act). Fair enough, except nothing really is done with this. The metatheatrical suggestion turns out to have nothing to it. And whilst we know Carmen involves bullfighting, is it really ‘about’ it? It could be, I suppose, but there is little sign of that here, other than a strange obsession with internal organs (and even that is pushing an association). 

Violence, one might say, is a central theme, though nowadays we tend to tread a little more carefully when it comes to that perpetrated by men on women. Micaëla is sexually assaulted by the soldiers when she arrives, which makes her embarrassing octopus-like approach to Don José at best unfortunate. (I might suggest she was traumatised, but I do not think we go that deep.) More fundamentally, the ‘symbolic’ association of Carmen with a bull is, on a charitable reading, extremely unfortunate. Portraying the Roma community as body snatchers dealing in human organs: well, I shall leave it at that. Don José’s enthusiastic induction at the end of the second act, harvesting Zuniga’s innards I shall let speak for itself; likewise the cardless card scene in which entrails, gingerly approached with white rubber gloves, are not so much consulted as haplessly dangled. 

If anything worse still, the idea of Carmen as an opéra comique is abandoned for what seems to think itself a knowing send-up of grand opéra – why, when the work is not that in the first place? – yet ends up capitulating to Meyerbeerian ‘effect without cause’ far more than it realises. Strange people, presumably symbolic of something or other, march around the stage to no particular effect. Some are in drag, others are children, others are soldiers who excitedly attempt, without success, to have sex with the stadium walls (and are promptly carried off by the bodysnatchers). Choreography, here as elsewhere, is worse than unfortunate. Tandberg’s production, then, is less ‘about’ vulgarity, ‘knowing’ trajes de gitana notwithstanding, and more plain vulgar.   

Given the setting, Aigul Akhmetshina and David Butt Philip emerged with considerable dignity, the musicality and dramatic commitment of their performances impressive throughout. Akhmetshina did what she could to present a proper mixture of pride and vulnerability, in a readily communicative performance Butt Philip seems unable to put a foot wrong right now, readily conquering swathes of the tenor repertoire. I am happy to report that his French is excellent too. Would that I could say the same for Byung Gil Kim’s Escamillo, for which I was lucky to decipher one word in twenty. It was a pity, since his dark tone and stage presence showed promise; but if all one is left for the words is to read the surtitles, then much is lost. Maria Motolygina’s Micaëla was beautifully sung, despite Tandberg’s peculiar conception of the role. Indeed, so was everything else, the well-trained chorus included. My heart went out to its singers for some of the am-dram movement they were required to do: again, presumably ‘ironic’, yet hardly seeming so. 

The faults of the evening lay neither in the singing nor in the pit, where Ben Glassberg conducted an incisive, colourful account of the orchestral score, considerate to singers without bowing to them, aided immensely by keen, responsive playing from the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper. He was not helped by having to stop for all-too-numerous incidents of mid-act applause in what appeared to verge on built-in pauses onstage. I may be too Wagnerian, may Nietzsche forgive me, about this, but such monotonous regularity of indiscriminate applause does no one any good. Nor, I fear, will a barrage of coughing from all quarters, suggestive of an advanced-stage tuberculosis clinic. Surely part of a director’s job would be at least to encourage continuity of action; but then a good part of that job seemed on this occasion to have been missed. Rarely has Andalusia seemed less inviting or less interesting.

 

Carmen, Opera Holland Park, 10 June 2022

 

Carmen – Kezia Bienek
Don José – Oliver Johnston
Escamillo – Thomas Mole
Micaëla – Alison Langer
Frasquita – Natasha Agarwal
Mercédès – Ellie Edmonds
Zuniga – Jacob Phillips
Moralès – Jevan McAuley
Le Dancaïre – Themba Mvula
Le Remendado – Mike Bradley

Cecilia Stinton (director)
takis (set designs)
Johanne Jensen (lighting)
Isabel Baquero (choreography)

Children’s Chorus from Cardinal Vaughan School
Opera Holland Park Chorus (chorus director: Richard Harker)
City of London Sinfonia
Lee Reynolds (conductor)

Image: Ali Wright

 
Carmen was the last opera I saw before the end of the world. Not necessarily what I would have chosen; for many of my friends it was Fidelio, whose absence from my truncated Beethoven Year I regretted deeply. But then none of us chose pandemic, lockdown, death, misery, and the rest. It was good, though, to have opportunity to exorcise another pandemic ghost, albeit in different guise. Cecilia Stinton’s new Holland Park production has little in common with Martin Kušej’s staging at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden; nor did Lee Reynolds’ traversal of the score, in his own, skilful, new reduction correspond to my memories of Daniel Barenboim. 

Different strokes…? Doubtless, yet I could not help but regret the lack of rethinking, especially in staging. There are half-hearted nods to a feminist turn, which in context come across more as odd than enlightening, for ultimately what we see is highly conventional, permitting of little to say other than what it is not. We lacked, thank goodness, Francesca Zambello’s notorious donkey; otherwise, this was a ‘period’ tale, in uniforms and frocks. It all looks a bit like a school play. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s radical decentring of Carmen could not be more distant; the unremitting intensity of Calixto Bieito’s much ‘straighter’ retelling in Franco’s Spain seems a world away too. There is some ‘colourful’ dancing and other musical comedy-style ‘business’. Children hand around postcards advertising Escamillo’s fight. Don José elicits strikingly little directorial interest, but it would be difficult to say any of the characters was fully treated. And that, bar a peculiar role reversal at the opening, is more or less it. It seems odd that anyone might need a course in orientalism at this stage, but there we are.

Reynolds’s conducting had none of Barenboim’s revisionism either, yet proved more compelling than the staging. The City of London Sinfonia was on sharp form, clearly in sympathy with its conductor’s carefully gauged balance of drive and lyricism. If I missed the sense of numbers contributing to a sum greater than their parts, that is often the case here; and I realise, especially in the ‘authentic’ opéra comique version, that I could readily be accused of wanting to turn the opera into something (more Austro-German, Nietzsche forbid) than it is. Reynolds and the orchestra supported the cast and led the action where necessary and appropriate. No one could or should reasonably have been disappointed, save for the inevitable reductions in scale of a chamber orchestration. Even then, different balances—not least, more prominent woodwind—had one reconsider one’s position on the work: no bad thing, given its ubiquity. 

Kezia Bienek fully inhabited the title role, insofar as the production permitted. Hers was a Carmen, quite rightly, not inclined to take any prisoners, yet far from one-dimensional. Vocal delivery was well centred on the text as a whole (that is, words and music) and stage presence fitted the bill splendidly throughout. If the staging seemed rather to leave Oliver Johnston to fend for himself, he proved well able to do so, giving us an intelligently sung Don José. Thomas Mole’s dark tone was just the thing for Escamillo, in another intelligent reading. Micaëlas rarely disappointed, but that is no reason not to celebrate Alison Langer’s performance, beautifully and touchingly sung. A fine supporting cast and excellent performances both from the Opera Holland Park Chorus and pupils of Cardinal Vaughan School compensated in good measure for what I—though not, I think, the audience as a whole—perceived as lack of ambition in the production.  

Carmen, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 March 2020

  

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Micaëla (Christiana Karg) and chorus members

Carmen – Anita Rachvelishvili

Don José – Michael Fabiano

Escamillo – Lucio Gallo

Dancaïro – Jaka Mihelač

Remendado – Ziad Nehme

Moralès – Adam Kutny

Zuniga – Jan Martiník

Micaëla – Christiane Karg

Frasquita – Alyona Abramova

Mercédès – Serena Sáenz

Lillas Pastia – Klaus Christian Schreiber

Martin Kušej (director)

Herbert Stöger (revival director)

Jens Kilian (set designs)

Heidi Hackl (costumes)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Children's Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vincenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Like stagings of any opera – Elektra almost an exception – Carmens vary, though perhaps not so much as they ought. I have seen a few: from those that do not even to try (Francesca Zambello and her donkey, Aletta Collins for the embarrassing nadir of vapidity) to brilliant, interrogative reimagination (Dmitri Tcherniakov), via a valiant yet strangely tedious attempt to recreate (Barrie Kosky) and a relatively straightforward updating that yet remained on a dramatic knife-edge (Calixto Bieito). Not until now, however, had I seen Martin Kušej’s 2004 Staatsoper Unter den Linden production.

Situated omewhere between Bieito and Tcherniakov, albeit closer to the former, it holds up very well, especially when conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who knows it of old and offers, so it seems, a reading of this rather than a generic Carmen. There is little, thank God, of the picturesque here. In a production that put me in mind somewhat of his 2003 Don Giovanni (Salzburg), Kušej, like Barenboim, presents a dark, large-scale tragedy, in which even moments of interiority, emerging painful in their loneliness, seem defined by a grander canvas of the implacable. It stands a world away from the work’s opéra comique origins, which may concern some. All the worse for them; so, after all, are we. The question is whether it works, and it does. In that respect, I recalled another Salzburg Mozart production, Claus Guth’s 2006 Figaro. It sounds, disregarding as it does so much of what we might consider ‘essential’, as though it should not work, at least on paper, yet it does, having one reassess both the work internally and its place in a broader scheme of theatrical drama.

That fatal relationship between internal and external may indeed be understood to lie at the heart of this staging. A soldier faces a firing squad as the curtain rises: a daily occurrence or a foretelling of something unique? There is no need to choose, any more than there will be later when Carmen reads her cards, ostensibly with other the gypsies, yet actually alone, physically and psychologically, at the front of the stage. Jens Kilian’s elemental designs and the harsh environment – more Lorca than Mérimée? – in which they appear to be situated sometimes revolve to reveal something beneath or beyond, albeit through eyes we may wish or claim were not ours, yet unquestionably are. There is something pornographically joyless, recalling the director’s Don Giovanni, to the couplings that ensue when soldiers – and we – penetrate the hitherto mysterious factory. There will be along, whether at Lillas Pastia’s, in the mountains, or at the final bullfight. That is not to deny, but rather to heighten, the extent of violence at work, whether implicit or explicit, externalised or sublimated. Much of what unfolds may be ‘just’ something to do. Better than doing nothing? Perhaps: it is difficult to say; this does not seem to be a world given to reflection. We ask what Wagner means by love all the time; why not, at least on occasion, what Bizet does too?

Don José (Michael Fabiano), Carmen (Anita Rachvelshvili)

Nietzsche’s clarion call, ‘il faut méditerraniser la musique’, to exalt the sunny physicality of Carmen over the northern, décadent idealism of Wagner and worse, his disciples, comes ironically to seem the height of sentimentality, a typically German exaltation of ‘the south’ and evasion of the much-vaunted truth. Myth, instead, returns, a cold, hostile chorus, at least in external terms, not only participating in the action but holding it to scrutiny. Masks at the last invite the full, Attic horror we deluded ourselves was not really involved. Perhaps Wagner was right after all; at the very least, his tragic forebears seem to have been. The circle ultimately is closed, Carmen closing as it had begun; Don José faces a firing squad. The curtain falls, catharsis denied.

Carmen

If it would be a gross exaggeration to call Barenboim’s conducting of Carmen Wagnerian, such exaggeration may point, circuitously, in the right direction. Everything was not frenetic; all was not, in the banal sense, merely ‘colourful’. There was at times something almost glacial to the work’s progress, in recognition of bolder claims and connections. There was space – and this was not only, or even principally, a matter of speed – for reflection, for questioning, for self-interrogation. Savage turns, sometimes yet not always pretty on the surface, could then register with the bite they deserved. With the Staatskapelle Berlin playing at the height of its powers, resonances which rarely if emerge were able to do so. At the opening of the third act, for instance, truly exquisite horn playing, tone and phrasing clear as they was warm, momentarily had me imagine, if not a Mahlerian vista, then of an attempt to summon one up. It was not that playing or conducting in any sense suggested Mahler, let alone ‘sounded like’ such music, but rather that this was not a performance delimited by self-imposed constraint; it was open to what we, as well as it, might bring to the work. I realised that Berio’s play with Spanish Boccherini, Quattro versioni originali della ‘Ritirata notturna di Madrid’, was closer to the mark; rather it soon became so. We were not so very distant, then, from Seville after all. The scale and cruelty, however, of the musicodramatic canvas, or rather the cruelty that could develop within, was the point, mirroring, intensifying, even inciting what unfolded onstage.

Frasquita (Alyona Abramova), Moralès (Adam Kutny), Carmen, Lillas Pastia (Klaus Christian Schreiber),
Mercédès (Serena Sáenz) 

Much unfolded courtesy of Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role. Her lower register must be heard to be believed: not only its tonal richness, but also what she accomplishes with it. Hers was a magnetic, thoughtful, and far from lazily conventional performance from beginning to end. Likewise Michael Fabiano’s typically committed Don José. Christiane Karg’s Micaëla was perhaps not best served by the concerns of the staging, yet beguiled anyway. The chorus, inexplicably booed by one audience member behind me, was excellent in every respect, a good few of which would not always be called upon in a production of Carmen; likewise the large cast of extras. Jaka Mihelač, Ziad Nehme shone remarkably as Dancaïro and Remendado, whether in stage or vocal presence. Only Lucio Gallo’s woolly Escamillo seriously disappointed, more a minor Sopranos character than a virile toreador. If not every cast member’s French language and style perfect, it would be curmudgeonly to say more than that; the dramatic whole outweighed any minor shortcomings. A Carmen, then, to make one think; there are all too many others for those who would rather not.

Carmen, Royal Opera, 6 February 2018

Royal Opera House

Carmen (Anna Goryachova)
Images: Bill Cooper

Moralès – Gyula Nagy

Micaëla – Kristina Mkhitaryan
Don José – Francesco Meli
Zuniga – David Soar
Carmen – Anna Goryachova
Frasquita – Jacquelyn Stucker
Mercédès – Aigul Akhmetshina
Escamillo – Kostas Smoriginas
Dancaïro – Pierre Doyen
Remendada – Jean-Paul Fouchécourt
Voice of Carmen – Claude de Demo
 

Barrie Kosky (director)

Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Joachim Klein (lighting)
Otto Pichler (choreography)
Zsolt Horpácsy (dramaturgy)
Alan Barnes (assistant director)


Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Jakub Hrůsá (conductor)

At least Francesca Zambello and her donkey are gone. The Royal Opera’s previous production of Carmen worked in its way – not entirely unlike Meyerbeer at less than his best – yet it offered neither ambition nor insight; indeed, it appeared not even to try. Barrie Kosky rarely lacks ambition; insight is often more hit or miss, though. Kosky is a frustratingly inconsistent director: he is capable of outstanding work and something not far from its opposite. This Carmen is neither. First seen in Frankfurt in 2016, it offers an apparently arbitrary mixture of abstract grand opéra – surely the Intendant of Berlin’s Komische Oper should have a little more respect for, or at least understanding of opéra comique – and the irritating silliness of ‘look at us’ variety show routines. A few visually arresting moments, courtesy of Katrin Lea Tag’s designs, notwithstanding, it amounts to substantially less than the sum of its parts, not least on account of its perverse apparent lack of interest in characterisation.



I am not at all opposed to the idea of something adventurous being done with, even to, Carmen. It will always survive. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s recent, superlative Aix staging showed what can be done with a fundamental rethinking of the work. Not the least of its interesting insights was how, if we decentre Carmen, look at the action, in this case already very much in the realm of metatheatre, from the standpoint of, say, Don José, Carmen might actually become a far more interesting character. Kosky seems at times to inch towards the metatheatrical. ‘Don’t we all?’ one might well ask. However, it is only, ultimately, with the insight, if one can call it that, that Carmen is a show, all singing, all dancing – except when, occasionally, it is not. And so, the steps, certainly a fine edifice in themselves, and suggestive both of an amphitheatre and a bullring – are they not often the same thing in any case? – offer a way for the action to look at us, and for the characters not to look at each other. That is pretty much it, though. The loss, moreover, in never really knowing who anyone is – or rather knowing, but not on account of anything the production is showing or suggesting – is great. One can imagine the pseudish Christof Loy doing something like this; indeed, he did in his dreadful Lulu. Kosky is capable of much better than that, though.

 

The lack of realism – as an æsthetic: I am certainly not insisting that one ‘must’ see a romanticised Seville – inevitably hampers the musical performances too. In this weird abstraction, especially when punctuated by lengthy, breathy, soft-porn-style readings from the ‘Voice of Carmen’, over loudspeakers, we lose sight, aural sight too, of connections in the score as much as on stage. Again, it is not that I have a problem in principle with attempting an alternative to the dialogue, ‘edited by Barrie Kosky’ or not. However, the loss of a true sense, whether ‘then’ or ‘now’, of opéra comique, is not compensated for by any other gain. Further misguided performing choices, ‘after the critical edition by Michael Rot, adapted by Constantinos Carydis for Frankfurt Opera, 2016)’, conspire to the general ‘effect without cause’ of making heavy weather indeed out of so ‘Mediterranean’ a work.

 

I have never heard a poor performance from Jakub Hrůsá, a conductor I admire greatly. Here he certainly proved suggestive, in an admirably anti-Nietzschean way, of a ‘symphonic’ Carmen, Beethoven and even Wagner often coming to mind. Whether that really might be what Carmen needs, let us leave on one side; I had my doubts, but there are possibilities here worth exploring. In this context, however, it seemed more another confusing strand. Whilst Hrůsá often drew fine playing from the orchestra, in terms of colour, precision, even harmonic motion, there were perhaps a few too many slips, not least from the brass. Likewise, whilst choral singing was generally good, there were also passages in which stage and pit fell noticeably, disconcertingly out of sync. Such problems I can well imagine being ironed out in subsequent performances.

 

Escamillo (Kostas Smoriginas)

Anna Goryachova sang well enough in the title role, with clean command of line. I could often make little sense of her French, however, without the titles. Moreover, I had the strong sense she would have made more of an impression, if not in a smaller theatre, then at least in a more intimate production. The same could be said of most of the cast: hardly their fault. Francesco Meli’s all-purpose Italianate style had its moments, and in some senses might have been better suited to the staging. One surely wants something a little more idiomatic for Don José, though, and surely less coarse on top. Kristina Mkhitaryan’s Micaëla sounded curiously undifferentiated from Carmen, but again that was not necessarily the fault of either singer. The production offered her little opportunity to show who she was, but again she sang well enough. Quite why Escamillo was turned into a figure of mere camp is anyone’s guess; Kostas Smoriginas did what he could in the circumstances, and yes, you have guess it, did that well enough. Indeed, there were no causes for complaint amongst any of the cast. Ultimately, however, for all the production’s increasingly attempts, somehow both desperate and smug, to ‘entertain’, proceedings quickly became more tedious than anything else. That is an achievement of sorts for Carmen, but a sad one. Carmen’s shrug at the end – it had all been just a very protracted game – said it all really.

Les Pêcheurs de perles, English National Opera, 19 October 2016

Coliseum

Zurga – Jacques Imbrailo

Nadir – Robert McPherson
Leïla – Claudia Boyle
Nourabad – James Creswell

Penny Woolcock (director)

Dick Bird (set designs)
Kevin Pollard (costumes)
Jen Schriever, Ian Jackson-French (lighting)
Andrew Dawson (movement)
59 Productions (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: James Henshaw)
Roland Boër (conductor)

Images: Robbie Jack

 

Devotees of The Pearl Fishers: perhaps you should avert your eyes now. If it is a work you love and/or admire, nothing I might say about it will convince you otherwise, quite the contrary. Nor do I harbour any wish to do so. However, coming to it for the first time, I can only say that it must rank amongst the worst few non-Verdi, non-Donizetti operas I have seen from the benighted ‘repertoire’. That is not a comment on the production, dire though it may be; it is not a comment on the mixed bag of musical performances. The work ‘itself’, though, is something whose alleged attractions I cannot begin to discern.

 

Carmen it is not; even the blandest of bland Micaëla’s music seems red in tooth and claw compared to anything heard here. Indeed, the best music, such as it was, seemed to lie in the couple of minutes or so of very straightforward orchestral introduction, its slight promise ever remaining unfulfilled. And the story, such as it is? If we are to have Orientalism, might it not at least be a little more interesting than this? Perhaps bored members of a nineteenth-century Parisian audience might have found it mildly, although only mildly, ‘escapist’. To us, it is at best akin to what I imagine a Mills and Boon plot summary to be, albeit without the sex. There is no character development; there are barely any characters. If the relationship between Zurga, the village headman and Nadir, the pearl fisher, might be drawn out to include something homoerotic – it is surely impossible to take seriously the claim that either has any real interest in Leïla, our cipher ‘Priestess of Brahma’ – then that did not happen here.

Nadir (Robert McPherson) and Zurga (Jacques Imbrailo)

For Penny Woolcock’s production, ‘Made for the Met’ written all over it, is almost as bad as the opera itself. Its disingenuous nod to ‘relevance’, pretending somehow to be ‘about’ poverty, even natural disaster, whilst treating the ‘picturesque’ lives of others – Others – in touristic fashion to match any nineteenth-century colonist is unsatisfactory at best. Writing words such as this in a programme note confers in itself meaning and coherence neither upon the note nor upon the production allegedly related to it:

Despite its genesis, the preoccupations of The Pearl Fishers are fiercely contemporary. Climate change and rising sea levels have made ten million people homeless in the Bangladesh Delta alone and they survive on a wing and a prayer. After all, the sea rises higher, we still fall in love with people we’re not supposed to fall in love with, and irrational behaviour is not the exclusive province of others.

 

Do not worry, ‘colourful’ people: we are irrational too, and we feel your pain! Lengthy scene changes with ill-thought-through, cartoon-like ‘special effects’ do not help. It all looks ‘lovely’, though, especially to a middle-class white audience, amused by colourful make up and costumes, and a few children running around for no obvious reason. It might almost be Deborah Warner’s notorious Messiah ‘on location’. All-out ‘escapist’ fantasy might have been a better bet, or engagement with real colonialism and its aftermath: perhaps even some real attempt at interaction between the two. Naturalism with the figleaf of a socially concerned programme note is not just embarrassing; it is tediously embarrassing.

The ENO Orchestra and Chorus were, as usual, on good, often very good, form. Would that they had had more interesting material with which to work, the choruses in English sounding redolent of minor nineteenth-century anthem-land. Roland Böer’s conducting was somewhat stiff at times, but he seemed to know his way around a work hardly worth getting to know one’s way around. People rave about ‘the duet’; I found it excessively long and inconsequential, not helped by the fact that a considerably superior performance – as throughout – was to be heard from Jacques Imbrailo’s Zurga vis-à-vis Robert McPherson’s strained Nadir. (The character’s name is unsuited neither to the opera as a whole, nor to some of the tuning we endured.) Claudia Boyle handled Leïla’s coloratura well; however, her tone was often pinched earlier on. James Creswell sang well enough as the High Priest, Nourabad. Unsurprisingly, though, I have heard more involving performances from him. Perhaps a great performance and production might have lifted the opera; probably not. In any case, that did not in happen here.

Carmen, English National Opera, 20 May 2015

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Carmen – Justina Gringyte

Don José – Eric Cutler

Escamillo – Leigh Melrose

Micaëla – Eleanor Dennis

Zuniga – Graeme Danby

Moralès – George Humphreys

Frasquita – Rhian Lois

Mercédès – Claire Presland

Dancairo – Geoffrey Dolton

Remendado – Alan Rhys-Jenkins

Lillas Pastia – Toussaint Meghie

Girl – Sophia Elton

Calixto Bieito (director)

Joan Antonio Recchi (revival director)

Alfons Flores (set designs)

Mercè Paloma (costumes)

Bruno Poet (lighting)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Sir Richard Armstrong (conductor)

 

When I saw this production open in 2012, I opened by writing, ‘A triumph for ENO! I suspected that Carmen would prove eminently suited to Calixto Bieito’s talents, and so it proved. Shorn of any ‘picturesque’ pandering – remember Francesco Zambello and her donkey? – what we saw here is perfectly attuned to Bizet’s resolutely unsentimental score.’ And so it still very much seems, under the able revival direction of Bieito’s then assistant, Joan Anton Rechi. The updating to the tawdry end of the vicious Franco regime continues to resonate; violence is in the air and more than in the air. At any point, it can and will claim its victims, many of whom we see on display here. We too live in a militarised society, although one that remains slightly more bashful about proclaiming itself to be such; we can draw parallels without their in any sense being forced upon us. We certainly know poverty, racism, misogyny, and the other forces we see depicted on stage; we also know, increasingly well, child abuse – and the figure of the small girl, both loved and abandoned by her mother, looks to an uncertain future most likely to be cyclical, or worse.

But above all, Bieito’s mastery of his craft as director and storyteller comes through. Characters who can sometimes seem romanticised, caricatured, even one-dimensional are more complex than we generally see. Carmen stands out less than is often the case; her vulnerability is as much social as personal, and all the more credible for that placing. Likewise Micaëla’s greater capacity for agency, her deviousness – no mere ‘angel’ on this occasion – make her a far more interesting character. Has she even invented the story about Don José’s mother? She certainly expresses triumph upon prizing him away from Carmen, harking back to the first scene in which she cannot prevent herself from kissing him – and clearly feels no shame in having done so. ‘Franco or his successors?’ I asked last time. ‘Is there that much of a difference, especially under the present regime?’ We may make substitutions across history, across the world, whilst at the same time remaining plausible specificity, indeed ruthless realism.

Ryan Wigglesworth conducted an excellent account last time; I am not sure that Sir Richard Armstrong was not finer still. Each act had its own colour, its own pace, but the ineluctable calling of Fate drove, in the best sense, the action forward. The ENO Orchestra was on top form, its woodwind solos full of character, fresh and subtle as a fine manzanilla. The strings dazzled in as impressive an orchestral performance as I have heard in the Coliseum all year. Likewise, the chorus, of which the director asks a great deal, was its typical excellent self. These were individuals but they were also a threatening and threatened mass.

Justina Gringyte was somewhat more aloof than Ruxandra Donose, but equally convincing as a character. Hauteur, relatively speaking, worked well here, and she could certainly turn on the charm when required. Her lines were clean, and her slightly accented English equally clear. Don José is a difficult role; in the beginning, Eric Cutler seemed a little too generalised, too lacking in charisma. However, he seemed, especially in the context of a strong company, to grow into the role. Leigh Melrose’s reprise of Escamillo offered an uncommonly subtle reading, in which the relationship between vulnerability and machismo – ever a ‘Spanish’ theme, even for a Frenchman such as Bizet – was intriguingly explored. Eleanor Dennis’s revisionist Micäela did not lack for sweetness of tone, especially during her third-act aria. Rhian Lois and Clare Presland offered vividly characterised readings of Frasquita and Mercédès. Special mention should be offered to Sophia Elton as that frightened, yet strong, little girl.

Those who have yet to see Bieito’s Carmen should hasten to the Coliseum; those who have done so before will need no encouragement from me. Let us hope, as I concluded in 2012, for more Bieito from ENO – and, indeed, for the Royal Opera to enlist his services too. The former enfant terrible is now widely recognised as one of the most thoughtful, provocative opera directors at work today; we need to see more of him in London. More from Armstrong would be no bad thing too. 
 

Le Docteur Miracle, Pop-up Opera, 10 March 2014

Images: Jenny Dale

Drink, Shop & Do, London

Laurette – Aurélia Jonvaux

Silvio/Pasquin – Robert Lomax
Véronique – Sarah Champion
Le Podestat – Benjamin Seiffert

Darren Royston (director)

Clementine Lovell (producer)
Fiona Johnston (co-producer)

Elizabeth Challenger (piano)
Maria Garzon (musical director)

 

Just two or three minutes from the sterile new ‘piazza’ in front of the renovated King’s Cross Station, the delightful café/bar, Drink, Shop & Do offered an equally delightful resuscitation of Bizet’s one-act Le Docteur Miracle. It may not be especially characteristic – the eighteen-year old Bizet was skilful, but no Mozart or Mendelssohn – but it certainly fulfils the terms of Offenbach’s 1856 competition for his own Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. In the end, the judges were unable to decide between Bizet’s offering and that of Charles Lecocq, awarding a shared first prize to both. They then alternated in performance – eleven in total – after which Le Docteur Miracle seems to have gone unperformed until 1951.

 

 

Given its brevity, Pop-up Opera hit upon the inspired idea of framing it with music from The Pearl Fishers and Carmen, the latter’s excerpts providing a lovely ‘trio of desserts’ in which audience participation was encouraged, but which also offered opportunity for the soloists to present rather different operatic credentials. All of them sang well throughout. That Achilles heel of so many performances, poor French pronunciation and style, was not an issue here. Moreover, one could hear and understand every word of the French text, enabling the silent film-style projections to offer a witty gloss upon proceedings rather than merely translate. Robert Lomax’s finely-sung Silvio was ardent within limits, true to his character rather than trying to turn it into something that it was not. Aurélia Jonvaux’s Laurette was perhaps the most stylishly sung performance of all, married to lively, quicksilver acting ability. Sarah Champion perhaps came into her own more in the Carmen dessert, but that it is at least partly to be attributed to the nature of her role; she certainly displayed a gift for stage conspiring. Benjamin Seiffert’s Mayor offered beautiful darkness of tone a pleasingly, though not exaggeratedly, smouldering presence, and last, but not least, an impressive turn as flautist. There seems every reason to expect that all of them will go far, likewise the indefatigable Elizabeth Challenger, granted the vital, often thankless task of playing the piano reduction.   

 

Clementine Lovell’s production – she will also sing Laurette in alternate performances – updates the action so as to take advantage of mobile telephones: sexting and the like. A tiny space was well utilised, and doubtless will be in other venues. With so small an audience and the performance taking place at such close quarters, there is ample scope for interaction. This was undoubtedly my first opera in which I was both personally serenaded as ‘Capitaine’ and given a quick shoulder massage, for which many thanks should go to Jonvaux and Lomax respectively. The helpful programme offers a far better synopsis than those of many major houses. A delightful evening, then, highly recommended.

 

For details concerning subsequent performances, in other London locations and beyond, please click here.  

 

Carmen, Royal Opera, 16 December 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

 

Moralès – Ashley Riches

Micaëla – Verónica Cangemi
Don José – Roberto Alagna
Zuniga – Nicolas Courjal
Carmen – Anita Rachvelishvili
Frasquita – Simona Mihai
Mercédès – Rachel Kelly
Lillas Pastia – Caroline Lena Olsson
Escamillo – Vito Priante
Le Dancaïre – Adrian Clarke
Le Remendado – Stuart Patterson
Guide – Jean-Baptiste Fillon

Francesca Zambello (director)

Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Arthur Pita, Sirena Tocco (choreography)
Mike Loades, Natalie Dakin (fight director)

Actors, Dancers

Royal Opera Chorus and extra chorus (chorus director: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

 

Alas, a depressing evening, of which the worst culprit was for once perhaps not Francesca Zambello’s West End musical ‘approach’ to Bizet’s opéra comique. Zambello’s production does its job, I suppose, in as non-intellectual a way as you could imagine: something for those for whom Miss Saigon is a little too challenging. But, except for the inappropriate scale – which, to be fair, is a problem large houses will always struggle to overcome – it does not really get in the way. The donkey – ‘Polyanne the donkey, supplied by John McLaren and Linda Chilton of Island Farm Donkey Sanctuary – still walks on for no discernible reason, yet it had, or seemed to have, the intelligence and grace to look as bewildered by its appearance as we were. As for the absurd Madonna – this is no probing of Spanish religious practice, but, as with Zambello’s Don Giovanni, an appearance that remains at the level of mere religious tat – it continues to be wheeled on too, remaining stationary whilst a priest blesses Escamillo and Carmen. And why does the fourth act’s opening chorus continue to be omitted? (It surely ought to offer the director plenty more dubious opportunities for display.)

 

I shall not go on, for that, as I said, was not really the greatest problem. Daniel Oren, I am afraid to say, offered what must be a serious contender for the title of worst conducting I have endured in a major house. (I am tempted to delete the word ‘major’, so atrocious were the results.) The first act came off worst of all. After a blithe and bouncy opening – one could see him, blithely bouncing, too – the rest of the Prelude ground to a halt. Yet that was nothing compared to the disjunctures between pit and stage, the inability to maintain any tempo whatsoever – and certainly not on account of judicious rubato – and the apparent lack of rehearsal throughout. Indeed, it sounded as though Oren had never seen the score before, let alone rehearsed it. The orchestra occasionally sounded good on its own terms, but one could hardly blame it for times when it seemed less than wholly committed. I should be tempted to describe Oren’s contribution as hack work, were that not a gross libel to hacks across the world. If anything, his conducting was even worse than it had been in Robert le diable. I cannot imagine why the Royal Opera continues to engage him; it is not as if there is a shortage of conductors for a work such as Carmen.  Constantinos Carydis did a fine job last time around, in 2010, but it would be difficult to know where to start with a list of possibilities.

 

In that context, it is, I think, wise to be charitable to the singers as well as to the orchestra. That said, and all allowances made, it was anything but a vintage evening in that respect. Nicolas Courjal was the sole surviving cast member from 2010. What I wrote then applies with at least equal force now: he ‘made a more virile impression as the lieutenant, Zuniga, than either of the two principal men’. For Roberto Alagna, as Don José, was sometimes wildly out of tune and proved in general, especially before the interval, coarse in his delivery. At best, he sounded as if he were singing Puccini in French. Vito Priante was better as Escamillo, though there was nothing especially memorable to his assumption, which might well have fared better in a smaller theatre. (The horse, of course, does not help.) Anita Rachvelishvili has an attractive voice, but it was difficult to feel that it was right for the role. Not only was her French unidiomatic, but vocal strength was very much tied to the lower end of her range; I could not help but wonder whether she would have been happier singing Tatiana, or even Olga. It did not help, moreover, that she looked more like Escamillo’s mother than lover; the moment when she awkwardly sat upon Don José was unfortunate in every respect. Verónica Cangemi had her moments as Micaëla; indeed, her third-act aria was the only time at which I was remotely moved. Nevertheless, there were too many moments of vocal harshness. Two Jette Parker Young Artists  made excellent impressions in smaller roles, however: the Moralès of Ashley Riches and Rachel Kelly’s Mercédès both had one looking forward to hearing more from them. Next time, all being well, in a more involving production and with a conductor who at least approaches a level of basic competence…