Review: Carmen get it, by Max Rashbrooke

Friday, 2 June 2017, 12:44 pm
Opinion: Max Rashbrooke

Carmen
June 1 – July 18 in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch
NZ Opera

Reviewer: Max Rashbrooke

In the programme for this production, director Lindy Hume notes that her first, controversial version of this opera, some 25 years ago, was labelled "the feminist Carmen". And it's an apt label: this is a production that is as much about power as it is about passion.

The opera opens not with the traditional (and predictable) swirl of chorus members faking a crowd scene: instead, the cast lines up staring out and up into the audience for an almost uncomfortably long time, signalling some kind of challenge, an intent to unsettle.

The opening scenes also raise questions about power. The men waiting for the appearance of Carmen and the other cigarette factory girls are set low down, gazing up in supplication, cast into shadow. Later on, in the tavern scene, the women take their clothes and dance around them in the manner of American Indians circling the wagons of settlers.

What this deconstruction does is to locate otherwise hidden channels of female energy in the script, subverting to some extent the traditional power dynamics. Nino Surguladze, as Carmen, continues this theme: hers is a laughing, sardonic, strong woman who never really shows even a hint of vulnerability, probably because she knows that, in this male-dominated world, she can ill afford it. This approach also points up the limits of this subversive power: for all the hold she has on men, Carmen can attain value only through her attractiveness; she remains trapped in traditional constructs, and tragedy results.

So this is a powerful, unsettling opera; it is also an extremely well-rounded production, with barely a weak link. The beautiful set is dominated by a curving, crumbling stone wall, the jagged edges of which suggest the broken lives playing out in front of it. Even more effective is the absolutely brilliant lighting, used to stark effect in Escamillo's ‘Toréador’ aria.

Both singing and acting are strong right across the board. Surguladze is impossible to ignore, utterly convincing as the bird that has never known any rules, and hers is a wonderful voice (even if her diction is so vague as to render the words largely incomprehensible). So too is the heroic, desperate tenor of Tom Randle's Don Jose. His aria ‘La fleur que tu m'avais jetée’ is a stunner, and like the other setpieces with him and Carmen it is brilliantly staged.

I would have liked Randle to look less harried at the start, because it doesn't allow much contrast later when he is being harried by his love for Carmen; but his final-scene disintegration is superbly done, and almost too painful to watch. As Escamillo, James Clayton turns in a superb performance, combining overt menace with both vocal subtlety and clarity.

Emma Pearson's Micaëla is a touchingly innocent counterpart to the mayhem around her, and beautifully sung, as are the parts of Frasquita and Mercedes. If anything detracts from the production, it is the generally terrible quality of the French accents on display. But that is a very minor criticism of an otherwise superb and subversive opera.

© Scoop Media

Max Rashbrooke

Journalist

Max Rashbrooke is a journalist and author working in Wellington, New Zealand, where he writes about politics, finance and social issues.

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