The first performance of Carmen at the Opéra Comique in Paris in March 1875 caused something of an outrage with its verismo depiction of the gypsy girl Carmen as a ‘small-time gutter prostitute’ (in the words of one contemporary commentator). Demi-monde Parisian audiences at the time saw the Opéra Comique as a respectable social environment in which to find solvent suitors for their ‘respectable’ daughters: it was also a place where ‘respectable’ courtesans held court, but the character of Carmen was seen, at best, as that pertaining to a ‘low-class courtesan.’ Hypocrisy indeed!

We have moved on a long way since the demi-monde Paris of 1875. Some more recent productions with a feminist inflection have even celebrated Carmen as a modern prostitute, as a paragon of independence, a woman who can hold her own, choose her own destiny. Of course it is not entirely clear whether or not Bizet intended to cast Carmen as a prostitute (although Prosper Mérimée’s novella alludes to prostitution as Carmen’s métier). At the time there were reports of immigrant ‘rough,’ ‘loose’ girls working in factories who invariably clashed with the law (one case actually reports an Algerian/gypsy factory girl who knifed one of her work-mates, causing death in the suburbs of Paris). And it was a common (rather racist) practice to class Algerians, as part of the French empire, as gypsies, especially if they were of mixed race. Bizet was an assiduous reader of social reportage and it is likely that he knew of such cases. He certainly knew well a certain Celeste Vernard, who had worked as a dance-hall escort, and as a prostitute, and some commentators have even suggested that he based Carmen on her.

So how does Covent Garden’s much publicised new production of ‘Carmen’ shed any new light on the Carmen factor? Does it tell us anything new about gender conflict, patriarchy and sexual obsession? Well quite frankly no. It is a very traditional production with period sets and immaculately turned out matadors, picadors etc. Now there is nothing wrong with traditional productions; we had a not so visually lavish traditional production from Covent Garden in 1989 with Maria Ewing as Carmen and Luis Lima as Don José. That production did tell us something new about the old story, and it was mostly to do with Ewing’s superb acting and singing. Any production of ‘Carmen’ stands or falls by virtue of the lead role Carmen. She is at the centre of the opera in a way not experienced in other standard operas, with the possible exception of ‘Don Giovanni’. Carmen, as one opera critic put it, ‘has all the best tunes’, even José’s touching ‘Flower song’ in Act two is shot through with emotional and musical references to Carmen.

Anna Caterina Antonacci (who has had a mixture of favourable and more critical reviews for her ‘Carmen’ in the London press) was to have sung the leading role tonight but was indisposed. The young Hungarian mezzo-soprano (although sounding more soprano to my ears) Viktoria Vizin stood in for her. Miss Vizin has sung in most of the famous houses throughout Europe and the US; mostly in minor, or support roles like ‘Paulina’ in ‘Pique Dame’. The opportunity to sing ‘Carmen’ was probably a big break for her. Given the circumstances she coped extremely well with this taxing role. After sustaining the opera narrative perfectly up to Carmen’s famous ‘habanera’ with the initial children’s chorus and the smoking girls’ chorus outside the notorious cigarette factory in Seville, Bizet transforms the whole tone of the opera; the ‘habanera’, L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’, in its opalescent fluctuation between major and minor initiates a totally new tone of sensuous allure and danger. With Vizin the notes were very well sung; but she does not yet understand the concept of acting with the voice. Ewing, whom I mentioned above, did more than just deliver the notes, she inflected the opening downward chromatic scale of the ‘habanera’ with a subtle sotto voce, slightly wavering with the orchestral beat, to produce a smoky erotic sounding tone. Of course all the great ‘Carmens’ have this effect in their different ways from Supervia, through to Solange Michel, Los Angeles, Price and Ewing, to name just a few. It is only fair to add that tonight’s conductor Phillipe Augin (sharing conductorial duties with Pappano) took the opening measures of the ‘habanera’ in a quite perfunctory manner, missing the subtle rubato in the dances tempo fluctuations. To hear what I mean here just listen to the recordings of Plasson, Cluytens, Beecham and Reiner. The conducting picked up from here, as did the playing of the Covent Garden orchestra.

The José of Marco Berti lacked a certain presence, again to do with operatic acting ability. José is a difficult role for any tenor. He is quite a sympathetic but dull character whose obsession with his mother (sentimentally encouraged by his former girl friend Micaela, sung tonight by Liping Zhang) is transformed into a sexual obsession with Carmen. Vocally Berti was quite efficient, but his voice lacks the required vocal range. Berti can sing quite softly with sweet legato in ‘Carmen, je t’aime’, in the flower-song, he can also produce great tenor volume, ‘Pour la dernière fois’, in the last act finale, but he seems to lack a mid range, also at top register (in full throttle) he has a tendency to bark stridently.

The arrest scene of Carmen, after she slashes the face of one of her work-mates with a knife, was done in the standard way, with José being ordered by Zuniga (sung well tonight by Roderick Earle) to arrest her and take her off to prison. I felt that the shenanigans with the rope became a bit portentous and tiresome… O K, we know this symbolises their later fatal entanglements, but don’t overdo it! The ‘seguidilla,’ ‘Près des remparts de Seville,’ Carmen’s second great set dance piece, must be one of the most elegant and mildly sensuous arias to be sung in a context of arrest and imminent incarceration… no doubt this was one of the reasons Nietzsche so admired ‘Carmen’. Miss Vizin sang the piece well enough but again without the vocal acting the piece requires. Underlying the ‘seguidilla’ must be an element of desperation, danger; she is planning to seduce José into allowing her to escape, thus certainly jeopardising his military career. Those upward runs on every ‘Près des remparts’… must be infused with that frisson of dramatic and vocal risk; something Callas (who never sung Carmen on stage) understood well. Although there was ample thigh exposure from Miss Vizin, this did not really compensate for the lack of sensuous drama in the singing and acting.

In Act II, in Lilla Pastia’s tavern, we hear from Carmen’s two gypsy companions, Mercedes and Frasquita, in their asides and mild flirting with the smugglers, brought off with the right kind of piquant humour tonight by Liora Grodnikaite, and Ana James, who both sang well; particularly the Mercedes of Grodnikaite. The music of the wild Gypsy dance initiated by Carmen’s ‘Les tringles des sistres tintaient’ was whipped up into a suitable frenzy with Vizin dancing wildly.

Throughout the production the sets and lighting were atmospheric, having an almost painterly, Goyaesque quality at times. At the end of the dance sequence José appears (demoted) after his prison sentence to meet Carmen. Carmen’s behaviour to him at this point is quite coquettish, blowing hot (in her dance for him) and in her final appeal to him to follow her over the mountains, ‘Le-bas, le-bas, dans la montagne’.., and cold, as when she tells him he cannot love her if he does not leave with her immediately and disobey orders. Miss Vizin sang the marvellously alluring ‘Là-bas, là-bas dans la montagne’ quite beautifully, just lacking that last ounce of vocal contrast depicting the mysterious lilt in the vocal line. Laurent Naouri’s Escamillo, Carmen’s new love, or infatuation (?), totally lacked the macho swagger in acting and singing one has come to expect from singers such as Sherrill Milnes, Michel Dens, and Gino Quilico in the 1989 Covent Garden production. His appearance as toreador on a horse did nothing to change this impression. Escamillo comes from an older species of operatic characterisations (the Duke of Mantua from Rigoletto comes to mind) and is more an operatic stereotype than a complex character. Naouri’s baritone voice did not make much effect in ‘Couplets du Toreador’ and amazingly, for a French baritone, some of his French diction was smudged!

Through most of Act III (with the smugglers, with José’s collaboration as a guard for the sake of Carmen) it is clear that Carmen is no longer interested in José, and his clingy obsessions. The contrast here between Carmen’s indifference and José’s anguished obsession was not brought off as dramatically as it should be. This was also evident when Escamillo reveals that his new love is Carmen – Berti just bellows out ‘Carmen,’ expressing no sense of dread and shock; the ensuing fight was also rather unconvincing. Partly this was to do with the rather clumsily executed stage direction; unnecessary running about across the stage by José, on watch. There was one scene shortly before Micaela arrives with news of José’s mother, where José and Carmen end up in an absurdly awkward roll-about on left-hand front stage – I was not sure whether this was just an awkward piece of staging , or the depiction of the attempted sexual act gone terribly wrong. In cinematic terms there was a distinct lack of continuity, linking one narrative sequence to the next. This might also have been to do with the sheer numbers (smugglers, girls, onlookers) on stage. The production here needed more logistical/stage direction and co-ordination.

The beginning of Act IV was more a feast for the eyes than a festive procession of bandilleros and picadors linking up dramatically with the preceding act and what is to follow in the tragic close of the opera. Horses, a portable Virgin Mary, with copious candles, with a priest granting some ritual of absolution on Carmen and Escamillo? The various shenanigans of cartwheels (Billy Elliot style) all became somewhat superfluous. The final scene, where Carmen pledges to confront José, who was hiding in the crowd and waiting for his opportunity to settle old scores with Carmen, requires exceptional alacrity and imagination of stage production if it is to make its true dramatic effect. One shortcoming here, which had characterised the whole production, was the movement and comportment of those on stage, particularly the two main characters. Despite much running around and extensive gesture, I rarely had the impression that Carmen and José came together, linked up in terms of body language. The fatal stabbing seemed clumsily executed, Carmen just flopped down on the stage, and José was just left gaping for a few awkward seconds. José’s ‘C’est moi qui l’ai tuée!’ sounded strangely detached from the tragic murder of Carmen.

The production deployed some of the original spoken dialogue important in revealing (quite early on in the operatic narrative) more about the central characters; Carmen’s sense of humour, her reference to José’s priming pin, after the Habanera, and her joke that ‘it will pierce her soul’ one of her many of asides with a clear sexual connotation. The dialogue also provides important reference points for understanding José’s character as repressed and given to violence – much of this was excluded tonight, which is a pity because it links up to the catastrophic closing scene; Carmen, as a liberated woman, murdered by a maternally dominated psychopath.

Each age will have its own version/interpretation of Carmen. Despite enormous advances in gender sexual tolerance since Carmen’s uncertain premiere in Paris, some hold on to older characterisations of the central character. In tonight’s programme notes, Patrick O’Connor refers to Carmen’s ‘at best… essential frivolity,’ which sounds like a watered-down recasting of the old, hypocritical take on her as a sluttish femme fatale who destroyed a decent, upright soldier? Perhaps we might regard her today as an honest (‘Jamais je n’ai menti’, and she’s telling the truth, as always) and liberated woman murdered for no other reason than that she refused the regulative strictures of patriarchy. The legacy of the liberated woman who is punished for her ‘refusal’, for her self-determination, had a long history after the first production of Carmen; in countless adaptations and also the emergence of the ‘femme fatale’ in the stunning ‘film noir’ of the 40s an 50s, in Europe and in Hollywood. Sadly I can report no continuation of this liberating tradition in tonight’s Carmen production.