How to say anything new about Carmen is the perennial challenge faced by opera directors. The power relations between the sexes that make the work as potent today as ever – arguably more so – have been deconstructed in many productions in recent years, not least by Barrie Kosky at Covent Garden in 2018, and rather more successfully Calixto Bieito at ENO in 2012.
Damiano Michieletto, can always be relied upon to offer fresh insights and there are plenty in this production. His principal idea here is to give a prominent role – indeed a walk-on part – to Don José’s mother.
If that sounds implausible, even perverse, Michieletto justifies it by regarding her as a Lorca-style matriarch who represents the family and religion-based tradition from which José is in retreat. His mother’s emissary, Micaëla, thus becomes a surrogate mother inducing Freudian guilt, while the secular, sexual freedom to which he’s drawn is incarnated, of course, by Carmen.
The latter part is taken here by the Russian mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina, a recent Jette Parker alumna who has shot to fame, taking the role to acclaim at the New York Met recently. With her secure technique and honeyed tone containing a hint of sexual allure, she’s a potentially winning Carmen.
But the eroticism is at present conveyed by somewhat subtle vocal nuances. One welcomes her and Michieletto’s avoidance of the hip-gyrating temptress stereotype, but the result here resembles a slightly awkward, petulant teenager.
Nor does Piotr Beczala’s guilt-ridden, emotionally torn José quite convince, for all the authentic ring and tonal beauty of his singing. Kostas Smoriginas’s firm-voiced Escamillo struts his stuff admirably and Olga Kulchynska earned a huge ovation for her fervent Micaëla. Sarah Dufresne and Gabriele Kupsyte were excellent as Frasquita and Mercédès, as was Blaise Malaba as Zuniga.
Paolo Fantin’s sets and Carla Teti’s costumes evoke a vaguely 1970s location in a remote rural, sun-soaked Spanish village. Ingenious stage revolves, combined with Alessandro Carletti’s sometimes stark lighting, offer more interior, even symbolic spaces for reflection.
These are frequently inhabited by the spidery black-clad figure of José’s mother, who doubles as a harbinger of fate. Oblivious to her son’s suffering, it is she who shockingly delivers the card of death as José finally throttles Carmen.
Antonello Manacorda’s balletic performance on the podium keeps the show light on its feet, but the evening fatally lacks the exhilarating tightening and release of dramatic tension. I didn’t miss the castanets, the bullring or the pelvic-thrusting. But where was the animal magnetism, the explosive chemistry, the dark underbelly of sexual passion?
Royal Opera House, to May 31; roh.org.uk
