|
|
|
|
|
Opera UK, February 2010 |
EMANUELE SENICI |
Bizét, Carmen, Milano, 7. Dezember 2009 |
Milan
|
|
The announcement that the new Carmen (December
7) opening LA SCALA’s 2009-10 season was to be directed by Emma Dante was
greeted with widespread scepticism. Few in the opera world had heard of her,
a 40-something Sicilian who thus far had staged only her own plays, violent
affairs centered on the crippling effects of family, and set in the
devastated human landscape of her native island. As reports of her ideas for
Bizet’s opera appeared in the press over the weeks preceding the opening
night, scepticism grew further.
In the end, though, this turned out to be a rather traditional Carmen. Dante
sets the action in a square surrounded by brick walls (a cliché of the stage
designer Richard Peduzzi): we could be anywhere in the western hemisphere.
The costumes, designed by Dante herself, run the gamut from the utterly
generic to a classic torero outfit for Escamillo. All the characters except
José tend to be followed by what could be seen as projections of their
thoughts or desires: Micaëla, for example, always appears with a
cross-carrying priest and two altar boys, ready to celebrate her wedding
with José; during their first-act duet her black dress turns into a wedding
gown, while in Act 3 this same gown becomes the sheet of a huge bed, Micaëla
having metamorphosed into Jose’s dying mother. This sounds more avant-garde
than it actually comes across, and there is much else which would not look
out of place in, say, Zambello’s safe Covent Garden production. But Dante
has a firmer grasp of theatrical space than Zambello: all the choral scenes
are beautifully choreographed, and the viewer’s attention is drawn, gently
but firmly, to where it should be. Despite some confusing details, the final
impression is that of a fully integrated, carefully thought-through piece of
theatre, and a stimulating take on an opera perhaps too familiar to many of
us.
Daniel Barenboim’s choice of tempos tended to favour slow over fast,
especially in the more lyrical numbers (except Micaëla’s aria, dispatched
comparatively speedily, perhaps in order to help a short-breathed and
tired-sounding Adriana Damato). All the more remarkable, therefore, was
his ability to sustain great tension in the pit and on stage, above all when
José and Carmen were involved: the final duet, played and sung as an
inexorable march towards death, made a particularly strong impact. This was
surely due in significant part to the excellent contributions of Jonas
Kaufmann and Anita Rachvelishvili. His José is a weak and desperate soul
whose anger grows inexorably over the course of the drama; so does his
voice, which finds spine-tingling subtleties in the Flower Song but then
rings out powerfully in the duel with Escamillo and the finale.
Rachvelishvili, a Georgian singer in her mid-20s who is a recent graduate of
La Scala’s young singers’ programme, possesses a true mezzo voice, rich,
flexible and evenly produced. Her command of the stage is stunning for
somebody so young, and her musicianship sure-footed if not yet particularly
subtle: altogether a most promising role and house debut. Erwin Schrott
played Escamillo as a consummate man of the theatre, who knows full well
what the public want and gives it to them with a mixture of seductiveness
and disdain: in the context of this take on the character, the occasional
lack of vocal power contributed to the sense of superior detachment. The
best of the others were the Frasquita of Michèle Losier and the Mercédes of
Adriana Kucerová.
At the end, there was enthusiasm for Rachvelishvili, Kaufmann and
Barenboim, different degrees of appreciation for the others, and a prolonged
battle between boos and bravas at the production team’s appearance. I
guess it will take many of La Scala’s regulars a while to recover from the
mind-numbing effect of the diet of theatrical inertia to which they were
subjected during the Muti regime.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|