CARMEN • LONDON
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Ellie Kurttz
REVIEW CARMEN LONDON: NAKED AND COLD AS ICE
Calixto Bieto, the daring Spanish director and bad boy of opera, has stripped Carmen down to her garters in a minimalist set design in his London production for English National Opera (ENO), which is currently enjoying its fourth revival at the Coliseum.
Photo: Ellie Kurttz
The risky, provocative absence of Spanish folklore has predictably caused several reviewers to turn up their noses, but I actually think Bieto is onto something when he cuts the tragedy down to the bone and lets the coldness and cynicism unfold without the charter holiday aesthetic we have become accustomed to in Bizet’s masterpiece, which usually takes place in a colourful Seville.
What remains is a worn-out telephone box and an aluminium flagpole with a Spanish flag, around which a platoon of brutal, testosterone-fuelled police soldiers from the Franco era in the 1970s assault anything that has a pulse. The rest is darkness and beautifully lit theatre smoke.
Photo: Ellie Kurttz
The whole thing has an atmosphere of naked, unplugged rawness, which softens a little when Carmen’s dirty smuggler friends roll onto the stage in six cool retro Mercedes cars with all their contraband.
Photo: Ellie Kurttz
She looks magnificent in the title role, the talented young Irish mezzo-soprano Niamh O’Sullivan with a beautiful, creamy tone, slim, blonde and seductively cheeky in a tight skirt and black lace bra, red bikini or sexy silk chemise, while John Findon’s bodega-rounded tenor Don José paints a surprisingly clumsy but also credible portrait of the character, who, blinded by false flattery, allows himself to be seduced by Carmen’s cunning advances. Get it through your head, man, she never loved you!
Photo: Ellie Kurttz
Apart from his long pink stockings, Escamilo is more reminiscent of a local, childish charlatan than a roaring masculine bullfighter, but his smart facade is enough for Carmen, who throws herself at him. Don José has had enough and slits Carmen’s throat in a final scene that exudes fatal attraction and tragic powerlessness. Some think there is too much volume and too little chemistry in the interaction – I strongly disagree.
Photo: Ellie Kurttz
I have taken note of the criticism from, for example, the Daily Express, which cleverly calls this Carmen a four-star performance of a three-star production of a five-star opera. Calixto Bieto’s staging, however, offers something I have not seen before, focusing on the coldness, cynicism, malice and thoroughly magnificent music that flows with opera earworms.
GOT TO SEE THIS awards four stars for an original take, which is probably best enjoyed as a creative variation when you are already familiar with the classic productions with their full-on Andalusian folklore.
Carmen’s disastrous premiere in 1875 is one of the most popular opera anecdotes, but the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
The performance certainly shook up the “proper” premiere theatre Opera Comique with its family-friendly repertoire, but a wide audience loved Carmen for its erotic and violent plot, which sold lots of tickets.
After the premiere, Carmen was performed 36 times in the same season, reaching its 500th performance in 1891 and its 1000th in 1904.
Today, Carmen is reportedly the world’s third most performed opera after La Traviata and The Magic Flute. It is a pity that Bizet did not enjoy the success, as he died of a heart attack, broken by shame, at the age of 36, just three months after the premiere.
