Review - Carmen - Opera Australia

José and the Pussy Cats
The most popular opera in this galaxy, Carmen, as most people know was a flop at its premiere. The audiences at the initial performances thought the first act OK enough but nothing special. Things turned sour with the 'toreador' song and from that point on the reaction turned against it for the rest of the run. If there had have been video in 1875 Carmen would have gone straight to it. Bizet died shortly after, unable to undertake any revisions or compose recitatives in place of the spoken dialogue which were required to get the work accepted to mainstream houses in Paris and other countries. Subsequent stagings were better received and since then it has become a staple. With every tune in it so well known you'd think it was the operatic equivalent of a 'juke box musical' but no, it was written like that and - with the once despised toreador song now one of the most popular tunes in the world - stands as an operatic freak, doomed to over familiarity. That scholars have been working since the 1960s toward a definitive critical edition and that this production tries to create an 'urtext' Carmen of it's own doesn't really matter.
Francesca Zambello is currently one of the top opera directors creating (usually) literal productions in terms of keeping within the intended time and location of an opera. Her direction of Prokofiev's War and Peace would rate as one of the most magnificent stagings of the last decade; she attended to every internal and external detail. The sexual tension, for example, in this scene is electric while her ability to place, move and direct a performer's gestures is so telling. Zambello's Carmen surprisingly has little sexual tension. The story is so well known that, like a Classical tragedy, the outcome is so inevitable that the action along the way is almost redundant. Zambello injects some new life into the old favorite (sadly the matador dance from her recent Covent Garden staging has still to be seen). The Carmen here is Pamela Helen Stephen, light-voiced and light-mannered when you consider how over the top some Carmen’s can go. There is very little sign of attraction to José and the attraction to Escamillo is as underplayed, at the end of act three the smugglers exit one way while Carmen seems to wearily wander the other way towards Escamillo's off-stage voice. Choosing between José and Escamillo is purely commercial. There may be some connection to Carmen the fatalist in the "Habanera" and final scene where she flings her arms outward in a sacrificial pose. These arm gestures are often involuntary with even the most skilled acting singers but here they suggest the woman's surrender, even sacrifice, to either sex or death.

The action doesn't really take off until the entrance of the factory girls, up till then it is Seville straight out of a travel brochure. There are some strange goings on. The town square is crowded with people apparently determined to do nothing. On one side the army barracks on the other the cigarette factory in the middle an orange tree (Seville - Seville oranges, geddit?) that wobbles with every stage movement as much as Carmen's breasts in this production don't. The stage is cramped with exotic supernumeraries, chickens and even a donkey. High class ladies and gents mostly stand motionless throughout the act looking more like a Spanish version of Sunday in the Park with George. Long haired 'majo' mill around endlessly picking fights with each other while, and most extraordinarily of all, a not very discreet maja sits topless being washed in full view of the populace and right outside the town lock up! While the 'fate' theme plays between the end of the prelude and the beginning of act one proper we see the collapsed and disheveled Don José being lead away by a soldier to remind us that this theme will recur and be associated with José's obsession and Carmen's murder because of it. This is not a new idea but it is not half as problematic as Zambello's business with Micaëla.

When the factory girls come out things pick up. The enormous doors swing open and in a cloud of cigarette smoke and lead by forewoman the girls enter. Wearing undergarments due to the stifling heat of the factory conditions they flap petticoats to air the sweat and smells while the forewoman half protects and half pimps them to the drooling majo. The set pieces, the "Habanera" and "Seguidilla" are choreographed to their detriment - perhaps because audience expect the full Carmen experience and feel cheated without a dumb show - but they contain some interesting and telling details, especially the "Habanera". Carmen does not seem to vamp the crowd rather than surrender to it, up to a point, repulsing any physical advances. The chorus, now they are supporting important action rather than filling in air time, starts doing interesting things. The women also start making sense. The factory girls, provocatively in their under skirts, suggest that this is indeed a town with two standards. Among the crowd is a black clad duenna feigning interest in a book while all the while snatching glances at Carmen relating her manifesto in habanera time. In the second act that same woman, now drunk and swing a bottle, mixes with the low-lifes in Pastia's tavern. Interestingly, Pastia usually assumed to a man is here played by a woman. Following the factory brawl in act one when Carmen is arrested Zambello has Stephen play the usual Carmen-isms down. No heaving shoulders and 'poitrine', pouting lips or cat-like rubbing up and down Zuniga. Instead she reels of her 'tra-la-la-la-la-la-las' as if to say 'yeah, yeah, I know the drill .., I have the right to remain silent etc etc" and that Zuniga probably arrests her every other day. It might upset the punters coming to see Carmen the 'panto' but it was certainly refreshing. The factory brawl was more than usually vigorous, with Carmen wielding a knife big and nasty enough to take the offending chorine's head off!

Zambello brings Micaëla back on at the end of the first act to see Carmen dupe José and escape. Rather than push him down as agreed she slips out of the rope and runs off leaving it obvious that José was responsible. That's a nice touch, it makes it fairly certain that Carmen has nothing but contempt for the man and it gives Micaëla something extra to worry about. In act three she returns determined to bring him back to his dying mother. Zambello makes it clear that there is no intention of Micaëla and José marrying now (in her aria she says "j'amais jadis"[I loved formerly]). Getting a closer look at Carmen is her primary interest so giving her an initial look at her, as she now does in act one is another nice touch. Bringing her on in the final scene to witness Carmen's murder makes very little dramatic sense however, if she is over the man, as she says, why does leave Navarre a third time to follow him? (and imagine the inquest over Carmen's death: "would you please explain to the court Ms Micaëla, why you did nothing to prevent the attack or raise the alarm?).

Vocally this is an impressive cast. Stephen, a lighter and brighter voice mezzo, makes Carmen's music almost conversational. She was convincing in all aspects of the 'Carmen as sex object 'legend; repulsing an unwanted contact; lap dancing the mummy's boy José or wrapping her legs around his neck. Hye Seoung Kwon has an impressive lyric voice. Her Micaëla sounds intensely dramatic for a lighter voice and she made some impressive tonal shading in her aria (no mean feat considering its frequent and difficult transitions between loud and soft). On paper Joshua Bloom seemed an unlikely Escamillo, the part seeming to lie outside his range, but it turned out to be a most complete assumption of a role. Everything about the character was there even if the voice sounds covered to create a deeper texture. His swagger, with a slight forward lean and self satisfied smirk he was every inch the show off. He was easily the best mover too, taking the choreographed gestures during his song in his stride which extended to some table top dancing). He is also a convincing horse rider (in the great Australian tradition of operatic horse riding set by Marjorie Lawrence). To cap it all his Escamillo looks like a young Ruggerio Raimondi. No wonder Bloom has established himself in the Northern Hemisphere so readily and even been elevated to barihunk-dom
It's good to see such re-thinking of a war horse and the re-thinking extends into the musical side as well as the dramatic. Richard Hickox spiced up the overly familiar line up of famous tunes and set some brisk tempos. The smuggler's quintet is breathless but breathtaking and most of the other numbers went at a similarly fast pace. Details are not smudged anywhere though, a striking instrumental phrase for example is beautifully highlighted, even the strange horn passages before the main theme in the act one José/Micaëla duet can be heard. Relating to the many recordings of the opera Hickox's tempi most resemble those of Beecham (EMI, 1958) and Clutyens (EMI,1950). Like the Clutyen's recording Hickox opts for spoken dialogue rather than sung recitatives between numbers. The version performed here, although using the first printed edition by the publisher Choudens which was issued with recitatives composed after Bizet's death three months after the premiere, reverts to something like the original with spoken dialogue. Not all of the known dialogue is included and the 'melodrame' sections (spoken over music) have been pruned so, sadly, Carmen's first words to José - the suggestive "épinglier de mon âme" - are gone.

Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet (Opéra-Comique version)
Libretto - H Meilhac and L Halévy after the story by Prosper Mérimée
First performance 3 March 1875, Opera Comique, Paris
First Australian performance - 14 May 1879, Opera House, Melbourne (12 performances)
cast

Carmen - Pamela Helen Stephen

Don José - Rosario La Spina

Micaëla - Hye Seoung Kwon

Escamillo - Joshua Bloom

Zuniga - Shane Lowrencev

Frasquita - Amy Wilkinson

Mercédès - Sian Pendry

Remendado - Graeme Macfarlane

Dancairo - Luke Gabbedy

Moralès - Andrew Moran

Lillas Pastia - Diana Emry

Guide - Robert Mitchell

Opera Australia Chorus

Gamins of the the National Boy's Choir

Orchestra Victoria
Conductor - Richard Hickox (April 9-26)
Olivier-Philippe Cunéo (April 29 May 3, 8 & 10)

Director - Francesca Zambello

Set & Costume Designer - Tanya McCallin

Choreograhper - Denni Sayers

State Theatre, The Arts Centre April 9, 12, 15, 17, 23, 26 & 29 May 3, 8 & 10 2008
190 minutes including two intervals
Warning: this production contains children and animals .