Carmen, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, November 2012

The ENO’s new production of Carmen by Calixto Bieito is a stunner. No romantic gypsies here, but a bunch of nasty crooks who don’t bother to tie up Zuniga when he appears in Act II, but simply kick the hell out of him behind their Mercedes. And in Act III after Micaëla, beautifully sung by Elizabeth Llewellyn, has been found hiding in the back seat of one of the half dozen Mercs on stage, Carmen’s friends Frasquita and Mercédès, go through her handbag and take whatever they feel like. Mercédès has a pretty daughter, but they are coarse women against whom Carmen looks like real class. And when Don Jose meets up with her in Act IV there is no stabbing. He slashes at her, she clutches her throat, and staggers with blood dripping over her hands.

All images ENO/ Alastair Muir

This is a very physical, earthy production. One of the soldiers runs round and around the stage at the start, presumably as a punishment, and collapses. But without strict orders, these are not soldiers you would want to get close if they are in buoyant mood. And during the overture when we see a conjuring trick that is merely a joke, this is a warning not to expect the usual. The occasional spoken dialogue worked well, the earthiness is compelling, and remember that the original story by Prosper Mérimée is based on a real case — in Spain he went to interview a prisoner condemned to death for killing a gypsy.

Carmen and Don Jose

As Don Jose, American tenor Adam Diegel sang brilliantly, portraying the honourable nature of this man who went so terribly wrong under Carmen’s spell. It was a great performance. Romanian mezzo Ruxandra Donose made an attractive sexy Carmen, and Mercè Paloma’s main costume for her was inspired, allowing her to bend her knees aside without losing decorum. Wonderful lighting by Bruno Poet went from dark to sultry to cheerful brightness for the start of Act IV when a pretty girl in long blond hair suns herself on a Spanish flag with a bull motif in its centre. At the end when Don Jose has committed his final sin, Carmen lies in the same position. The imagery is clever, with the dark shape of a huge bull at stage rear during Act III, pulled down with a bang to start the celebrations of Act IV.

The start of Act IV

Among supporting roles, Graeme Danby was smugly nasty as Lieutenant Zuniga, Duncan Rock made a fine Corporal Moralès with magnificent stage presence, and Madeleine Shaw sang an excellent Mercédès. The visceral energy of this production was complemented by Ryan Wigglesworth in the orchestra pit, along with excellent work by the chorus and children, and the whole thing came over as hugely realistic.

Not to be missed, and performances only continue until December 9 — for details click here.

Der Rosenkavalier, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, January 2012

For those who love this Strauss/Hofmannsthal collaboration, the programme booklet contains an interesting essay by Mike Reynolds, describing the vital contributions by Hofmannsthal’s collaborator, Count Harry Kessler. This well-connected and talented man, who was brought up in France, England and Germany, chose the plot and had a huge influence on its structure and realisation. The result inspired Strauss to create one of the most glorious operas ever written, and in Ronald Harwoood’s play Collaboration when the 80-year old Strauss is faced by allied soldiers at his house in 1945, he says, “I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier“.

The silver rose in Act II, all images by Clive Barda

Tomlinson and Connolly in Act I

Such a fabulous opera deserves performances of the highest calibre, and we had some here at the ENO. John Tomlinson is perhaps the finest Baron Ochs I have ever seen, giving this dreadful character a boorish aplomb that never goes over the top, and his diction, as ever, renders surtitles superfluous. He finds his match in the Octavian of Sarah Connolly, who invests this travesti role with youthful rambunctiousness, and sings with glorious power.  And then there is the Sophie of Sophie Bevan, who after a nervous start in Act II sang with quiet charm, floating her high notes above the confusion created by Ochs. Her meek responses to the Marschallin in Act III were enunciated with a tension that will remain with me as a template for all future performances of this opera. The Marschallin herself was Amanda Roocroft, a singer I have admired greatly as E.M. in Makropulos,  as Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes, and more recently as Eva in Meistersinger, but she has yet to inhabit the present role. I liked the wistfulness she showed in Act I after Octavian has left and she suddenly realises her little joke may kill their amours, and again in Act III her acceptance that the affair with Octavian is now over, but her portrayal needed more gravitas, and her appearance to quieten the confusion in Act III, which can be a high point of the opera, fell rather flat.

Amanda Roocroft in Act I

Musically the performance flowed with great charm under the baton of Edward Gardner, who gave fine support to the singers and produced magnificent climaxes from the orchestra at suitable moments, such as after Octavian leaves in Act I, and in the final Act.

The supporting roles were performed with great panache, the scheming Valzacchi and Annina well portrayed by Adrian Thompson and Madeleine Shaw, who whirled elegantly to the waltz time of the music as she handed the letter to Ochs towards the end of Act II. Marianne Leitmetzerin had great stage presence as Sophie’s duenna, prodding her charge with a fan to keep her on track in the conversation with Octavian, and Gwyn Hughes Jones was super as the Italian singer at the Marschallin’s levée in Act I. As Sophie’s father Faninal, Andrew Shore bristled with restrained emotion, and as he walked over to embrace his daughter towards the end of Act III he invested the moment with heartfelt reality.

Tomlinson and Connolly in Act III

This is a revival of David McVicar’s 2008 production, which comes from Scottish Opera, and I’m afraid I have reservations. Could someone please tell the supers not to run round pointing rifles at Ochs in Act III — this is the Austro-Hungarian empire, not the wild west — and Faninal offers Ochs a very old tokai, not a brandy. Tokai is a lovely sweet wine from Hungary, low in alcohol, just right for that time of day. Why can’t Alfred Kalisch, the translator keep with the original? And while on the topic why does he introduce claret when Ochs lies wounded on the couch? The text says nothing of claret, and in any case it was not served in a claret bottle.

These irritations aside, the scene for the presentation of the silver rose with Octavian in silver armour had a fairy-tale charm, and the musical quality of the performance makes this a must-see, particularly with the glorious representations of Ochs and Octavian by Tomlinson and Connolly.

Wonderful stuff, but be aware that performances, which continue until February 27, start at 6:30, or 5:30 on Saturdays — for details click here.

Rigoletto, ENO, English National Opera, September 2009

This Jonathan Miller production, revived many times in the past 27 years, sets the action in a Mafia crime family of the 1950s. It’s an interesting take on a story whose origin is Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse. Written in 1832 in the heady aftermath of the 1830 revolution that brought Louis-Philippe to power as the ‘citizen king’ of France, the title of the original play and its attitude to royalty were unacceptable in other parts of Europe. Kings do not ‘amuse themselves’ in this way and it was immediately banned elsewhere. When Verdi came to write his opera, in the years following the 1848 revolutions across Europe, he replaced the king by the Duke of Mantua but the censors still had concerns, not only about the portrayal of the ‘king’ but also the hunchbacked jester whose outward appearance reflected his corrupt nature and nasty streak while he remained a devoted father to his daughter Gilda. The concept of hedonistic, anti-social autocrats and their supporters was a far cry from the Western ideals of governance, but is not a million miles from crime syndicates that command murders when it suits them, yet treat their own with care and concern. With this in mind, Jonathan Miller’s production makes great sense, and the designs by Patrick Robertson and Rosemary Vercoe, with clever lighting originally designed by Robert Bryan, give an air of authenticity to the drama.

The jester, named Triboulet in Hugo’s play, becomes Rigoletto in the opera, and is one of Verdi’s great creations, sung here by Anthony Michaels-Moore, who played him with enormous sensitivity. His sneeringly lugubrious stage presence and lyrical singing gave just the right sense of conflict to this Lear-like character, and with Katherine White portraying Gilda’s vulnerability so well, these two became the centre point of the opera. The ‘duke’ was strongly sung and acted by the young Michael Fabiano, one of the six winners in the recent Metropolitan Opera competition, who seems to have just the right devil-may-care attitude for the ‘duke’. The cast balanced one another well, particularly with Brindley Sherratt as a darkly sinister Sparafucile, whose bass voice oozed menacing integrity — I was reminded of his excellent performance as Pimen in Boris Godunov last November. His sister Maddalena was also well sung and portrayed by Madeleine Shaw, but the lacklustre conducting of Stephen Lord was a disappointment. He seemed to have good control of the orchestra, and raised the tempo at significant points, but I didn’t feel the music breathed with the vitality of the plot.

In a recent BBC Radio interview, Jonathan Miller inveighed against the ‘concepts’ that some German directors bring to their opera productions. I agreed instantly, but the concept of a ‘concept’ is not well-defined, and I’d prefer to think of the opera itself inhabiting a domain, which each production represents in its own way. That Miller’s production of Rigoletto has lasted 27 years in the repertory of the ENO is evidence that its representation is a great success. What goes wrong with some German productions — and the Meistersinger and Tristan I saw recently in Bayreuth are cases in point — is that rather than represent the domain in which the opera lives, they transport it to a box that insulates it from all or part of its natural domain. Jonathan Miller doesn’t do this — he stays true to the original, giving us a way to understand and appreciate it.