Brand new production of Bizet's Carmen at the Royal Opera House, opens Friday. I go Monday.
Today was the Friends Rehearsal, where if you're lucky you can get in and see it more or less as is for a tenner. Or maybe even four quid.
Cast A was on show today: Anna Caterina Antonacci, Jonas Kaufmann, Ildebrando DArcangelo, Norah Amsellem, Matthew Rose, Jacques Imbrailo, Elena Xanthoudakis, Viktoria Vizin, Jean Sébastien Bou, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt.
In a nutshell, bloody good. I was a lot more impressed by the production than I thought I would be. A good few Francesca Zambello trademarks - or should I say clichés: the dominating wall cutting off a lot of the stage, too many brats doing too much, a tree (being Seville this was an orange tree), people dancing on tables. But actually, in fairness, these irritations aside it is a bloody good production.
It starts a bit strange. The curtain goes up to show a man lying on his stomach on the floor. I assumed this was Don José in prison but can't be sure. Then we have the crowd scene. This is set outside against an orange-washed wall of a house. It's perhaps a bit busy for my liking, with as, I say, brats doing unnecessary stuff like boules and hula hoops and being generally bratty. At the front of stage a topless woman bathes, but with her back to the audience (although facing many of the brats). There isn't a canal as such but there is a trough, a water trough at about waist height, that contains real water, and is good for splashing around. Also at one point the kids throw themselves over it. It's a bit strange having the soldiers' desk out in this outside bit. It also later becomes the scene for when Don José holds Carmencita in prison. In Act 1 a donkey appears, from the Island Farm Donkey Sanctuary. When the women emerge from the cigarette factory, they really are smoking.
It doesn't change much for Lilias Pastas (a female role, to many people's surprise) Place, except that the orange wall turns round a bit and has a staircase going up to the bedrooms, which we don't see. There are long tables (on which there is dancing). Escamillo arrives on a horse. A beautiful brown horse, but its horsebox was unmarked. At one stage it did turn its back and reverse to towards the edge of the stage. I doubt I was the only who had visions of horse plus baritone careering into the orchestra pit.
The orange wall turns into mountains in Act III with a handy walkway in the sky. In front is pitched a tent, and real fires burn. Atmospherically, it is splendid. The orange wall serves at the perimeter of the bullring in Act IV. Sadly, there is no actual bull on stage, although the horse reappears in the parade, bearing Carmencita. There is also a spectacular float with a Madonna statue and candles. In fact there is no visual representation of a bull at all. So this is the Animal Rights Carmen.
The dancing was of a high standard. The Flamenco at the start of Act II was excellent. Quite rough and lewd. I don't think they were Royal Ballet dancers, because the women were quite, well, normal sized, definitely not ballerina size. The Toreadors and Picadors in Act IV also looked good.
I have to say it is verging on the criminal to assemble a cast like this. I would stick my neck out and say it is in danger of being the sexiest cast ever assembled on an opera stage. Google Images and you'll find pictures of some reasonably good looking guys and gals, but that doesn't really explain the sheer sexual fizz on stage. It was staged as a deliberately sexy production. In the interval I texted that it has a psycho-sexual subtext, mainly Bondage and Domination, but on reflection, there is nothing 'sub' about it. Correctly, Don José starts as repressed, but things begin to change. The Seguidilla is very raunchy, very overtly sexual. I heard a great rustle and thought that the prudes were rustling newspapers in embarrassment, until I realised it was the sound of dozens of professional cameras in the orchestra stalls going into overdrive. Don José is tied to a chair by Carmen, then she throws the chair and him to the floor. Furniture abuse and tenorial rolling on the floor in one easy move.
In Act II Escamillo arrives arrogant and drop-dead gorgeous on the horse. Sadly, there was an absence of opera cliché of baritone removing shirt. Ah well, I'm sure we'll see him as Don Giovanni sooner or later. The sex scene between Don José and Carmen is precisely that, and if you're not turned on by now, you're not listening to the music. Another opera cliché is avoided when he doesn't finish the Flower Song with his head buried in her groin, but rather, on his knees. I can't quite remember the sequence of events but she certainly throws a chair at this point. And I think he rolls around the ground a bit more.
The return of the lieutenant and then the smugglers is pure comedy. I am puzzled at Jean-Paul Fouchécourt being cast in such a minor part, because he completely steals the scene, especially when he has Matthew Rose tied up (Jean-Paul is tiny and his head reaches about chest level on Matthew). I blinked, or was distracted at the bit where Matthew is stripped and ends up tied to the chair in his long-johns and vest.
Act III starts with Micaela's aria, which is the big moment for the sop, but, frankly, I can take it or leave it. This is not an inferred slight at Norah Ansellem, by the way, it's always the low point of the opera for me. One of the best scenes was the knife fight between Don José and Esamillio with an obligatory homoerotic sub-text when José has Escamillio over a pouf, I mean a bale of contraband goods, then we get a baritone rolling on the floor as José stabs his knife ominously into the bale.
The final act starts with a spectacular of the parade. Not quite the cast of two million as seen at the Albert Hall, but, nevertheless, a great parade. Then the crowd all disappear through the door in the orange wall, leaving a confrontation between Carmen and Don José. Nothing vanilla about this. Much of the scene is an attempted rape, him flinging her around, her struggling to escape. At one stage, again I blinked, he throws away from her what appears to be a black under-garment, you know the way men do that. By this point his shirt is unfastened to the waist. I can't be sure because I was in Row P without binoculars, but there did seem to be a tragic lack of chest hair.
The costumes were fine, some (the bullfighters) better than others. I was going to say that there is plenty of scope for connoisseurs of cleavage, but it's not really cleavage so much as 'barely decent'. Indeed when, Carmen and Manuelita are having the knife fight outside the factory, I did wonder whether Manuelita was going to fall out of her dress. And Carmen has plenty of décolletage on display at all times.
I had been a bit worried about this. Everybody says it's such a hackneyed opera, and I was fearing that a crap production would make it a damp squib. But I loved the production - despite a few niggles - and I remembered how much I like the music, especially from the orchestra, but also the arias, too. Obviously, being a rehearsal it's unfair to say anything about how well people performed. Just say I am very much looking forward to seeing it for real on Monday. I'd say Run Don't Walk to the Box-Office, but there are no tickets available for under a hundred, so it's Day Tickets, Returns and Ebay. Although somebody should send a complimentary ticket to Katherine Jenkins so that she might understand why she is such a sham in calling herself an opera singer...
Interview with Anna Caterina Antonacci
