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| The Telegraph, 10 December
2006 |
| Rupert Christiansen |
Bizét: Carmen, Royal Opera House, London, 8 December 2006
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Gypsy charms lift flat Carmen
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| Rupert Christiansen reviews Carmen at the
Royal Opera |
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 Two dazzling stars illuminate the Royal
Opera's otherwise fairly dull new production of Carmen. A raven-haired
beauty with charismatic stage personality, Anna Caterina Antonacci plays
Bizet's gypsy as a brave and sharp-witted woman surrounded by idiot men
pathetically lacking in her passionate energy and appetite for life.
She sings the role with ease and authority, making even over-familiar
numbers like the "Habanera" freshly vital, and brings an animal ferocity to
her final confrontation with her wretched lover. It's a gripping
interpretation, its only significant flaw being a tendency to clichéd
thigh-rubbing and mane-tossing when suggesting Carmen's sexual guile.
Jonas Kaufmann is equally impressive as Don José, a man clearly out of
his emotional depth, whose uncertainty about himself and his desires pushes
him headlong into murderous insanity. I've never heard a German tenor sing
French music with such fine style.
"The Flower Song" was touchingly and intimately done – a shy confession
of first love rather than a tenor showpiece – but he could fire big guns in
the last scene, too. Together, he and Antonacci made deep psychological as
well as musical sense of their encounters, and the audience rightly rewarded
them with an ecstatic reception.
If only they had been framed by a staging more richly textured than the
thinly mediocre effort directed by Francesca Zambello. The curved ochre
walls of Tanya McCallin's set do nothing to evoke the back streets of
Seville or the sweat of Lillas Pastia's tavern, let alone the deserted
mountain pass of Act III.
Little touches such as making Lillas Pastia a woman or showing Micaela in
the crowd outside the bull ring are neither here nor there when everything
else in the picture is so blandly picturesque and lacking in any sort of
emotional authenticity or realism. This is Carmen conceived as toothless
operetta not biting music drama, and the Royal Opera should be ashamed of
presenting anything so dismally anodyne.
At least Antonio Pappano's conducting generated some of the electricity
lacking in the production. Carmen needs to be driven with plenty of oomph to
stop sections of the first and third acts dragging, and Pappano certainly
kept things moving in a generally loud and brisk reading, played with gusto
by the orchestra. Bizet's Gallic elegance was short-changed, however: the
overall effect was a bit heavy-handed.
Ildebrando d'Arcangelo sang Escamillo with confidence, but looked glum not
surprisingly, because despite the hit ''Toreador" aria, it's a rotten role,
impossible to bring to convincing life. Norah Amsellem inexplicably appeared
to be playing Micaela as a half-wit, and her soprano took on an acidic edge
under pressure. The attendant gypsies, smugglers and officers were all
excellent, with the young South African baritone Jacques Imbrailo making a
particularly strong mark as Morales. The chorus sounded in rude health.
It's worth paying good money to see – and hear – Antonacci and Kaufmann
strike sparks off each other. But otherwise this really isn't much of a
show. |
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