Bizet, Carmen: (Revival) Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, Michel Klauza, conductor, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 28.2.2007 (GPu)

 

Conductor: Michel Klauza

Original Directors: Patric Caurier and Moshe Leiser

Revival Director: Robin Tebbutt

Set Designer: Christian Fenouillat

Costume Designer: Agostino Cavalca

Lighting Designer: Christophe Forey

 

Don José: Rafael Rojas

Carmen: Sara Fulgoni

Micaëla: Elizabeth Atherton

Escamillo: Stephen Gadd

Zuniga: David Soar

Frasquita: Charlotte Ellett

Mercédès: Antonia Sotgiu

Moralès: Daniel Chadwick

Lillas Pastia: Howard Kirk

Le Dancaïre: David Stout

Remendado: Alun Rhys Jenkins

Guide: Howard Kirk

 

 

David Soar (Zuniga) and Sarah Fulgoni (Carmen)

 

This WNO production was originally premiered in February 1997. It attracted a good deal more praise than otherwise at the time; I remember being a little surprised at the widespread enthusiasm for it. This revival largely confirms my earlier sense of unease. I find it, I’m afraid, a rather ponderous piece of work. This is a Spain where the sun, apparently, rarely shines. The prevailing gloom of the lighting is only very occasionally lifted. In Act IV the chorus offer oranges and fans (“to cool you”) for sale, but it is hard to believe that there is any necessity for them – the lighting conveys no sense of any burning sun.

 

I am not making a point about the merely picturesque or campaigning on behalf of the Spanish Tourist Board. The issue is more fundamental than that. Central to Carmen is Don José’s act of choice – a choice between two polarities embodied in Micaëla and Carmen. Don José stands between them, must choose between them, very much in the manner of a figure from a medieval morality drama choosing between the promptings of a good angel and a bad angel (or demon). In the libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, Don José repeatedly calls Carmen a devil. Her antithesis is Micaëla, an angel in both name and funtion. Her name is a femininisation of the Archangel Michael, and the name Michael means, in Hebrew, “one who is like God”.  In terms of function, it is relevant that the Greek word angelos is equivalent to the Hebrew mal’akh, which means messenger and that it is as the deliverer of a message that Micaëla appears in both Act One and Act Three – appearances and messages carefully timed by Meilhac and Halévy to counterpoise the influence of Carmen, to allow Don José the possibility of choice. But he makes the ‘wrong’ choice (in purely moral terms) and in doing so he moves out of sunlight into darkness – the libretto has a clear arch-like structure in terms of light: Act One is in sunlight and heat; Act Two is in a dark interior; Act Three is a dark exterior; Act Four takes us back to sunlight. As Max Loppert puts it in an excellent essay in the programme for this production, Carmen depicts “a terrifying journey – philosophical, moral and spiritual” – and that journey is from light into dark. Or at least it should be.

 

 

Elizabeth Atherton (Micaela) and Rafael Rojas (Don Jose)

 

The production disappoints in other respects too. Too many scenes are drearily static; indeed, both static and sedentary – it is surprising how many arias, especially in the first two acts are delivered while sitting down. It isn’t necessary, or desirable, that Carmen be tricked out with a plethora of Spanish kitsch; but it is essential, surely, that the world of Carmen and the cigarette girls, of the smugglers, should have more vitality than it does in this production – without it the contrast with the disciplined world of the army, or the implied cosiness of village life back where Don José’s mother and Micaëla live, largely disappears and with it disappears one of the opera’s central antitheses, one of its central embodiments of the kind of moral and social choice which faces Don José. There were moments of absurd literalism too, hammering home connections which the work itself makes clear enough – as when Carmen was made to paw the ground like a bull at the end of Act Three or to charge and butt Don José in the climactic confrontation in Act Four!

 

Sara Fulgoni (Carmen) and Stephen Gadd (Escamillo)

The shame is that there are many decent, and a couple of outstanding, vocal performances to be heard here – the effectiveness of which is to some extent dissipated by the production. In some ways the star of the production is the Chorus; not for the first time the Chorus of WNO comes close to stealing the show. The ensemble singing is wonderfully precise yet flexible; they have power aplenty, but never at the cost of subtlety or appropriateness. Their contribution to Act Four was breathtakingly good. The other outstanding performance comes from Elizabeth Atherton as Micaëla. Her pure soprano radiates moral certainty without the slightest sense of smugness and she convinces one that Micaëla’s innocence is not a matter of mere rusticity. In voice and manner Atherton brings to the role a natural, unforced dignity which makes (or would if it was allowed to) a compelling contribution to the work’s ‘argument’. Sara Fulgoni’s Carmen has an attractive richness of tone, especially at the bottom end of her range, without perhaps having the variety of tone to take her performance to the heights of the wholly memorable; in places her singing is more impressive for its power than for the sinuosity of rhythm and phrasing that the very best Carmens have. But hers is an intelligent, plausible reading of the role. So, too, is Rafael Rojas’s interpretation of Don José, though he has only a rather limited range of dramatic gestures to offer; not much of an actor, he is of the stand-and-deliver school of tenors, and at times he delivers some very enjoyable sounds. His voice, though, sounded rather strained at times and one wondered whether he didn’t perhaps have some temporary vocal problem to cope with? Stephen Gadd’s voice sounded rather constricted initially, but opened up as the opera worked towards its conclusion. He brought an engaging insouciance to more than one of his scenes that made considerable sense of the character. Most of the minor roles were very decently sung – Charlotte Ellett and Antonia Sotgiu offered delicious singing and sprightly presences as companions of Carmen in the roles of Frasquita and Mercédès; David Stout and Alun Rhys Jenkins were plausible and well sung smugglers and David Soar brought to Zuniga more humanity (not altogether attractive humanity, it has to be said) than is often the case.

 

Under the direction of Michel Klauza the orchestra of the Welsh National Opera, if not quite as radiant in sound or as crisp in rhythm as they have sometimes been, let no- one down. Musically, indeed, this was an enjoyable evening, even if it fell short of the very highest standards achieved by Welsh National Opera on occasions in recent years. But singers and orchestra were confined within a production which did little to supplement their efforts and something to detract from them.

 

Glyn Pursglove

 

Pictures © Robert Workman