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Bizet, Carmen: Soloists and Chorus, Capital Arts Children’s Choir and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Peter Robinson. Royal Albert Hall, London. 6.3.2009 (JPr)

The origins of the story of Carmen, which has reputedly given the world the most popular opera ever written,  go back to Andalusia in 1830 when the French author Prosper Mérimée heard an anecdote about a Gypsy girl who had been killed by a jealous lover. With the experience of another fifteen years of travelling in Spain, as well as encountering and reading about Gypsies, he published his novella Carmen in 1845. Mérimée's story is about Don José Navarro, a Spanish soldier, who is passionately in love with the Gypsy, Carmen; he deserts his regiment to follow a life of crime and murder for her. Because Carmen seems incapable of being faithful to him, Navarro kills her and whilst awaiting his execution for his crime recounts his story to the narrator in the novel. In Carmen, Mérimée creates one of the greatest femme fatales in all of literature; a woman who exploits her sexuality and mystique to further her own ends. Mérimée’s Carmen is ‘prettier than any Gypsy’ with eyes that are both sensual and savage. Because she could not afford perfume she wore heavily scented flowers. She is faithful to her own people and cannot tolerate José’s possessive love for her. She loves her freedom above all else and faces death boldly, totally resigned to her fate, bringing her story to a tragic end.

It is not clear why Bizet chose Carmen, described as ‘a sober laconic low life story only slightly relieved by the exotic setting of Spain,’ as the subject for an opera. His operas before this were romantic; he had never been to Spain and knew little its music. The management of the Opéra-Comique in Paris objected to its assorted Gypsies, prostitutes, thieves and cut-throats. Even his librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy did not particularly care for the project and they revised the story, much to Bizet’s displeasure, to make it work better as an opera and to be more acceptable to the mores of the day. To support Mérimée’s two central characters, they added Micaëla to symbolize the innocence of José's village and also included Escamillo to embody the type of man Carmen cannot resist. The première in 1875 was not successful and the press were hostile. Bizet pronounced it ‘a definite and hopeless flop’; it made him ill and probably contributed to his early death. For others such as his fellow composer Massenet,  it has been ‘A great success’ and Tchaikovsky later called it ‘A masterpiece’. There had been many mishaps at this première: the tenor Paul Lhérie had vocal problems; the cigarette girls, who were not used to smoking, choked in Act I; as Carmen, Celestine Galli-Marié lost her castanets and had to break a plate on stage and use that; also the timpanist misread his score and intruded loudly during the duet between Don José and Carmen. From this poor start,  Bizet’s Carmen has gained its enormous popularity over the years.

David Freeman’s 2005 production of Carmen is revived here for a short run of performances promoted by Raymond Gubbay and the Royal Albert Hall. It draws a lot, I believe, on the background story to Bizet’s opera for the various characters’ psychological motivations and inner lives. This is even down to the smaller details such as when Carmen loses her castanets and smashes plates before she is given some in Lillas Pastia’s tavern. David Roger’s set design,  which he describes as a ‘long snaking’ shape seems inspired by the literary figure and is serpentine because of Carmen’s ‘transfixing effect upon men’. However the insights seen during the Freudian nightmare depicted in the prelude with young children playing at bullfighting, men-as-bulls wrestling, young girls being taught flamenco and a small boy stabbing a ragdoll are never really elaborated during the rest of the evening.

I did not see this Carmen in 2005 but returned to opera ‘in-the-round’ last year with Tosca that I enjoyed, though with certain reservations. Carmen too was a thoroughly enjoyable night at the opera for the near-capacity audience it brought to the Royal Albert Hall. It is still not a cheap evening with the distant circle seats at £36 and the stalls at £55 but compares favourably with the cost of tickets for most West End musicals. The action is updated to the 1920’s and is colourful and to a certain degree as ‘spectacular’ as it says it is,  with its cast of ‘over 100 soloists, chorus and actors’. That one of the best moments for me was when a number of large trees for the Act III mountain pass rise high into the roof of the Royal Albert Hall before Act IV,  may suggest that I was a bit underwhelmed by the rest of it. That is indeed true though it is a good, honest, entertaining attempt at doing what it wants to do – telling the story clearly, allowing the singers to do their best and making good use of the space available – without triumphing in any of these categories.

Firstly, most of the action throughout the evening is too conventionally set in front of the orchestra at a far end of the auditorium away from most people watching. There is a parade of soldiers, townsfolk and children at the start of Act I, and then little further use is made of the space before the smugglers enter for Act III after the interval. The entrance of the bullfighters is botched in Act IV with too many distracting acrobats and jugglers among the large crowd and really a procession of bulls’ heads and children with ‘Day of the Dead’ masks was not much of a fiesta. Elsewhere, Don José would have needed a pair of binoculars to spot Micaëla at the other end of the set and the cigarette girls and later Escamillo wander conventionally about on stage. The cigarette factory is in what could be described as the curl of the snake’s tail yet the workers come on from the back by the orchestra. I was also surprised at the lack of animals for even at Covent Garden in their current staging by Francesca Zambello,  Escamillo arrives on a stallion and elsewhere there is a donkey and some chickens!

At times it really became difficult to see who was singing at any particular time. Escamillo comes to the tavern and sits down, and since the American Carlos Archuleta  is rather short, this  meant he disappeared amongst the throng until (rather too late)  he stood on a table for the end of his Toreador’s Song. Then again in Act IV when he pledges his love for Carmen,  it was very difficult to find them with everyone else standing around. Other  issues are unclear too,  such as in Act II where even though Don José is torn between duty and his tormenter Carmen, he never seems so overwhelmed with passion for her that he would be willing to kill his superior officer and run away with her. That Don José does go crazy with love for Carmen does become evident when he hits her in Act III and of course stabs her at the end of the opera,  but John Daszak’s performance here may have owed more to his experience singing Peter Grimes than David Freeman’s direction.

Daszak was a stolid Don José who looked persuasively like Stephen Fry. Generally, he lacked the pent-up anger required and his voice, despite the amplification that should have made his job easier, lacked any Italianate grace because he was straining at the top of his voice. Elizabeth Atherton’s Micaëla was rather a  ‘shrinking violet’ and no match for Carmen though she sang with some delicate silvery tones. Carlos Archuleta had suitable acting skills as Escamillo but lacked some of the vocal power, projection and charisma that the role requires. Another American,  Cristina Nassiff as Carmen was a feral, sensuous ‘bunny boiler’ capable of wrapping her legs round every man she encountered. With her rich voice and magnetic physical allure,  she both sounded and looked sexy and made this ultimately tragic role very real. Amongst the adequate supporting cast Simon Wilding really stood out by singing firmly and with relish as the lecherous Zuniga. He suffered the worst of Amanda Holden’s occasionally clunky translation when asked to sing to Carmen ‘Why have a Corporal when you co-o-ould have the boss?. There were other odd moments like that in the English translation which was generally sung clearly,  but off-puttingly the cast used a variety of accents for David Freeman’s spoken dialogue. I also worried why Escamillo could not sing ‘Toreador, on guard’ but had to sing ‘Toreador, be ready’ that replaces a a vowel sound with a consonant and means that the line cannot be sung as Bizet intended.

Conductor Peter Robinson’s accompaniment of the singers follows a trend in recent London opera performances where the orchestra is no more than a  backing band for the singers - although that  is more understandable here than for Der fliegende Holländer at Covent Garden. The emotional temperature from the polished members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was rather on the cool side but Robinson’s expansive conducting admirably maintained the coordination between all concerned. It could have all done with more Andalusian heat but it ended well, as the final confrontation between Don José and Carmen had the suitably violent electricity needed to bring a more than satisfactory end to the evening.

Jim Pritchard

Pictures © Raymond Gubbay Productions

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