There are
underpants aplenty in ENO’s ‘new’ (actually 13 year old) Carmen, but,
contrary to reputation, director Calixto Bieito seems unwilling to drop them. When
it gets down to the real meat and potatoes, only one todger is served up. To the
orchestral opening of the third act, a wafty, homoerotic dance solo suggests
the soldier in question can only be at peace in his fantasies. Well, if you've got
to stick a willy in Carmen, I suppose that's not a bad place to do
it.
Their next task is to race round London sourcing props for Calixto Bieito's upcoming ENO Carmen as cheaply as possible. The team that returns to the Coliseum with
the most items for the least dosh wins.
Calixto Bieito's new Carmen is more than two weeks away but already over half the tickets are gone - making it a roaring success by ENO standards. The sad consequence of this unprecedented popularity is that cheap ticket deals may be thin on the ground.
Fortunately, there's still a way to bag a cheap(ish) advance seat, if you're quick. As readers Martin and Sarah have kindly pointed out, the only dynamic thing about ENO - their new pricing scheme - means that Monday to Thursday tickets at the back of the upper circle (no surtitles visible) are 'only' £25 before opening night.
OK, so that's not such a great deal compared with some of the discount codes we've seen over the last couple of years. But if you're not willing/able to queue up at TKTS on the day on the off chance of a bargain, it's a reliable way to get hold of a cheap ticket.
Bieito is currently busy with Forests at the Barbican, a terrifying (at least if you're in the front row) patchwork of Shakespeare, Beckett, Goya and Alan Titchmarsh. Worth a try, with good seats as little at £16 (or £12.80 for members). Need any more encouragement? The Daily Mail called it "state-subsidised bilingual bilge". Praise indeed.
Bieito has set Rameau's baroque comedy gem in a Studio 54 style temple of 70s hedonism, with the titular nymph (played by a man) an oddly Thatcheresque figure in a blue wrap dress.
It looks from the photos (more below) as if his trademark bare-all approach has given way to family-friendly oversized prosthetics - at least this time.
It's the first time Munich tenor Vincent Wolfsteiner (Max) has gone naked on stage. He applies sound artistic logic to his decision: "Max is expelled from the community, he flees into the forest and becomes a beast. Animals don't wear clothes. It would be silly if I played it in underpants."
But there's another reason he's happy to bare all for Bieito.
A few years ago Wolfsteiner was 50kg heavier. As a huge - really huge - fan of Bieito, he was keen to work with the director. But he knew he'd have to flash the flesh if he did. So he dropped the excess weight, using a picture of Bieito stuck to his fridge as inspiration. "Now", he says "at the age of 45 I'm fitter than I've ever been before in my life."
The tautly-muscled Vincent Wolfsteiner (Max) is pictured above with Carsten Sabrowski (Kaspar) and below with Ina Kringelborn (Agathe) - and some of the five litres of fake blood ordered for each show.
Balloon-bedecked crash barriers split Max-Joseph-Platz in two on Friday night. On one side, operagoers in satin and stilettos shuffled through a narrow gap in the barriers to reach the Nationaltheater. Settling down on picnic blankets over the rest of the large square were the somewhat less glamorous audience for the free outdoors live screening of the evening's opera.
But in his new Munich Fidelio (yes, the one we won't be seeing at ENO) Jonas Kaufmann (Florestan) and the rest of the cast keep their pants on. The exposure is purely psychological. No nudity - and incidentally no snakes and no chainsaws either.
Bieito's Barcelona Carmen with Beatrice Uria-Monzon, Roberto Alagna, Marina Poplavskaia and Erwin Schrott comes to the Empire Leicester Square on 13 October. Tickets are £20.
On the minus side, it's showing in the poky Screen 7, which is more like a pub telly than a full-blown cinematic experience
The small but adventurous Theater Basel premiered their new Calixto Bieito-directed Aida last night. No reviews out yet, but plenty of photos (more over the page).
ENO's current management are clearly not bold/crazy/desperate enough to revive his 'Dirty' Don Giovanni - they've commissioned a new one from Rufus Norris for next season.
But as the Bavarian State Opera's 2010-11 calendar reveals, their forthcoming Fidelio, directed by Bieito, is an English National Opera co-production. So presumably it'll turn up in WC2 some time in the next couple of years.
An opera about loads of men locked together in prison. Hmmm, wonder how he'll tackle that?
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*** UPDATE 15 April 8pm ***
I received the following email message from ENO's Head of Press:
"I saw the piece that you put online earlier about Fidelio in Munich [link to this post]We have not contracted Calixto Bieito so please could you remove this with immediate effect."
Clearly, I have not removed the post (and, other than adding this update, I have not amended it either).
Why? The Bavarian State Opera's calendar - which is publicly available on their website as linked - *does* claim that their Bieito-directed Fidelio is an ENO co-production. And based on that information, which I assume to be correct, it is not unreasonable to think that "presumably it'll turn up in WC2 some time in the next couple of years". In the light of the ENO email, perhaps my presumption was incorrect - but that doesn't mean it was unreasonable to make it in the first place.
Which is a long-winded way of saying my original post contained accurate facts and reasonable assumptions made in good faith, so I'm not removing it.
However I'm happy to add ENO's message, which states that they have not contracted Calixto Bieito. The message is clearly open to a variety of interpretations, which I'll leave you the reader to make.
It's Mad Max Parsifal. From Calixto Bieto's new Stuttgart production (which opens this Sunday, 28 March), here's Parsifal (tenor Andrew Richards) and the flower maidens.
Conductor and Stuttgart boss Manfred Honeck recently told the German press that Richards (who is making his role debut) will be the go-to Parsifal for the next ten years. So no pressure then.
Klingsor and his magic flame-throwing underpants. Claudio Otelli (Klingsor):
Human flesh is on the menu and shirts are nowhere to be seen. Yes, details are emerging of Calixto Bieito's new production of Parsifal, which premieres on 28 March in Stuttgart.
"Apocalyptic sentiment and questions of meaning" are his main concerns. The setting is a society in material and spiritual collapse, inspired by Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road. "Designer Susanne Gschwender creates a destroyed landscape covered by ash, where a ruined motorway bridge is the only evidence of a bygone civilisation. Mercè Paloma provides the characters with an existential basic outfit: protection from heat, cold and pollution".
That's the konzept, but what is the reality?
"I'm tied to a spit and Kundry is sniffing my armpit," is how the American tenor Andrew Richards, who will play Parsifal, describes one of the rehearsal scenes in his fabulous and revealing blog, Opera Rocks. Bieito's staging, which "promises to be a very controversial telling" includes cannibalism and a flower maiden scene that made Richards feel "nearly unclean". The physicality means he "can hardly move each morning I wake up".
He may be shirtless, but at least, Richards promises, his pants stay on. His one word for the production? "Intense".
Gluck said that an opera's overture ought to indicate the subject and prepare the spectators for the character of the piece they are to see.
Advice that Calixto Bieito must have taken to heart for his Armida. There were more bare botties on stage in the first five minutes than you'd see in a whole season at the Royal Opera House, a trusty indication of the oddly unsecksy flesh-fest which was to follow. All male, apart from one bewildered-looking granny, their function was to service the desires of Armida and her lady friends, a bunch of corporate dragonesses in ohso-passé Ally McBeal suits.
Welcome to the Komische Oper, Berlin's racier version of the ENO, where seats are cheap, audiences are young and open-minded, operas are sung in the local language, and producers are given free rein.
Bieito's Armida has no interest in the joyless parade of flesh, and I do see her point. Was it even intended to shock? However outrageous the photos may look (scroll down for more), a sort of Benny Hill daftness soon sets in.
So Armida's target is the fully-clothed Rinaldo. But he's not that interested. Torn between fascination and rage she swears to kill him, but she can't make herself follow through, even with the help of the Marlene Dietrich-like figure of 'Hate'. So they fall in love, but then his mates burst through the walls of the stalls like G20 rioters (an amazing bit of theatre) to try and winkle him out of her clutches. They don't succeed, and the whole thing ends with a triumphant murder-suicide. Along the way there's a bit of lipstick lesbianism, a raped nun, a guy dancing with a ten foot python and the granny gets it on with a hunk while swinging in a chair ten foot above the stage. Classic Bieito.
This deconstructionist approach can be revelatory in more familiar works. I loved his Don Giovanni for example. Here I wasn't so sure. Though the snatched moments between the lovers were rendered truly tenderly (if only by contrast), a lot of the action seemed superfluous and merely decorative.
On a more technical level, I was impressed all round - by the blocking, the personenregie, the clarity of expression, and particularly the seamlessness of the production. Even though this is a 'number' opera, the action continued intelligently in a single narrative flow through the often lengthy ballets and interludes. Bieito truly is one of the great craftsmen of the operatic stage, and the massive applause he received at the end (very few boos) recognised his achievement.
Maria Bengtsson doesn't have the largest of voices, but it's the right sort of silvery soprano for the demanding central role and she was convincing throughout. The lush mezzo of Maria Gortsevskaya as Hate was even more impressive, her malevolent presence never slipping into caricature. Some of the other voices weren't quite 'baroque' enough and some simply weren't loud enough. But it was generally sung well, though the clunky German translation (from the original French) did it no favours, and some sloppy diction (no surtitles here) often rendered the action mystifying.
The baroque specialist Konrad Junghänel conducted the Komische Oper orchestra and their modern instruments sensitively if rather conservatively. Textures were light and the pace snappy, and if some of the detail remained obscured, thankfully there was no more than a gentle nod towards 'authentic' period practice. Last month I heard these same musicians perform Weill's Mahagonny - the polar opposite of Armida - no less convincingly. A truly versatile ensemble.
Below is a pre-production video with interviews and some explicit content:
Go here for some (warning!) explicit production photos, and find more photos over the page........
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