Intermezzo

Carmen, meet Dick

Carmen - Coliseum, 21 November 2012 (first night)

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. 

Lord Sugar lends Calixto Bieito a hand

Lord Sugar has set the contestants in BBC One's Young Apprentice a challenge of operatic dimensions.

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.

Watch it this Thursday 15 November at 8pm.

Cars, man - cheap

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.

Carmen without bull

Carmen - Salzburg Festival, 25 August 2012

Who is Carmen? A seething volcano of unfettered passions? An independent woman with the courage to forge her own destiny? A projection of male nympho fantasies? Or a whey-faced Berlin housewife with the voice of an angel and two left feet?

A little Carmen

Carmen – King’s Head Theatre, 10 April 2012

I keep returning to the Covent Garden of pub opera, the King's Head, even though the only worthwhile venture I’ve seen there so far has been Mark Ravenhill’s Coronation of Poppea.

This unfocussed new Carmen could have done with a Ravenhill – or indeed any decent dramatist – to kick it into shape. All the most hummable bits of Bizet’s opera are squeezed into a meandering new hour-long plot via a clunky English libretto, a bashed-up piano and an underutilised guitar. But nobody seems to have remembered that an audience needs a reason to care for the characters.

The evening kicked off with a squally but enthusiastic sing-song in the packed bar to the tune of L’amour est un oiseau rebelle. After a ten minute break for the audience to squeeze into the back room theatre and argue over who’d pinched whose reserved seat, the show finally got under way. In Rodula Gaitanou's update, Carmen lives in a garish hovel with escaped convict Escamillo and a gang of petty thieves, but falls for straight-laced bouncer Don Jose. She refuses to run away with him; he does her in. 

The superimposed comedy wasn’t funny, and the cast’s mumbled attempts at spoken dialogue were simply inaudible. But the final one-on-one showdown between Carmen and Jose benefited from the intimate scale of the venue and the compelling conviction of the performers, Christina Gill and Christopher Diffey.  More of this exploration of the emotional predicament of the protagonists and fewer cheap gags would have improved this effort no end.

Ginger groper

Magdalena Kozena checks whether Jonas Kaufmann has a gun in his pocket in Salzburg's new Carmen, while he hopes she washed her hands first.

Aletta Collins' traditional-looking production appears to be just a few live chickens short of Francesca Zambello's Covent Garden effort:

Will it wash?

Magdalena Kozena goes ginger for Salzburg Easter Festival's new Carmen, which opens on Saturday.

Calixto Bieito's Carmen live in Leicester Square

Live from the Liceu!

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

incredibly cheap Carmen at Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is not usually the place to find a cut-price deal, but they've made an exception with a couple of special Carmen showings. For the performances on 18 and 24 June, all seats are reduced to £37.50 or less. On the top-price seats, this represents a discount of £150+ (!). Best value seats remaining would appear to be mid/rear amphitheatre (£15) and balcony boxes (£105 for 4).

There is a catch - the shows are being filmed for the first-ever 3D opera movie, and the position and size of the special cameras may restrict views to some extent.

It's also not the greatest production or the most star-spangled cast. But it is cheap.

Read more and book here.

Carmen in Holland Park

Carmen - Opera Holland Park, 2 June 2010

Just about every last skirt-flicking, thigh-slapping cliché in the book is packed into Opera Holland Park's new but very traditional Carmen. It may not cast a radically fresh light on the old chestnut, yet it rarely feels tired or predictable in the way Francesca Zambello's overcooked Covent Garden production does.

see Opera Holland Park's Carmen for £10

Although the £10 tickets for Opera Holland Park sold out practically the minute they went on sale in March, there is hope if you missed out.

As part of their Inspire Project (an education, outreach and audience development programme), OHP are going to be making a few more cheap ticket offers at short notice. The take-up will also help them work out the best way to run the cheap ticket scheme in future.

As cher Mike of OHP puts it "We are finding that those who know us and are geared up to take advantage of the ten pound seat scheme tend to exclude the chance to give others we also want to target (they are not organised and aware nor necessarily looking for opera etc) and these offers and promotions give us that opportunity. We also know that many people just simply miss out - opera lovers."

First up is their new Carmen, which opened on Wednesday. It's a brilliant production, one of the best they've done (I will post my thoughts later today, but meanwhile check out George Hall's Guardian review) and the whole run is almost sold out.

If you want to see it on Monday 7 June (only) for £10, call 0845 230 9769 and give the password PURPLE. There are a limited number of seats, so it's first-come, first-served.

Royal Opera House Summer Season 2010

And so 2009/10 draws to a close with the usual tourist-friendly summer fare from the Royal Opera House.

The highlight (especially since he had to cancel Tamerlano) is Plácido Domingo's appearance in and as Simon Boccanegra (29 June to 15 July). We've all found out by now that he's not exactly a perfect fit - but then these days, who is? And it might be his last appearance at Covent Garden. And WTF he's Plácido Domingo. That's enough to make it essential. A cast that includes Marina Poplavskaya, Ferruccio Furlanetto and Joseph Calleja with Maestro Pappano himself conducting should compensate for Elijah Moshinsky's tired production.

Running it close is a new Laurent Pelly production of Massenet's Manon (22 June to 2 July) with Anna Netrebko in the title role. Pappano conducts again, and gorgeous Vittorio Grigolo makes his Covent Garden debut.

David McVicar's slightly fussy but intelligent Le Nozze di Figaro (31 May to 17 June) makes a swift return, with Erwin Schrott and a delightful springer spaniel vying for the cuteness award. As if that's not enough, Sir Colin Davis conducts most dates, making it a must-see.

Another McVicar, Salome (3 July to 16 July), has its first revival, with Angela Denoke in the title role and Hartmut Haenchen conducting. "Contains scenes of nudity and violence" - but not where you'd think.

Angela Gheorghiu lovers will be flocking to La Traviata (8 July to 17 July), though it may be James Valenti and Zeljko Lucic who make it worth seeing. Richard Eyre's production is a fine and thoughtful one, though anyone who catches it in May with Ermonela Jaho doesn't really need to see it again.

A swift resuscitation of Francesca Zambello's godawful Carmen (5 June to 26 June) has little to recommend it this time round apart from perhaps Christine Rice in the title role.

In the Linbury Studio, George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill (23 July to 26 July), here coupled with Berio's Recital I, comes highly recommended.

The Bolshoi visit in August, with a critically-acclaimed production of Eugene Onegin the only opera amidst endless nights of ballet (which to be honest, is probably a safer bet).

Friends' booking opens on 3 March and general booking on 6 April.

Toby Spence rolls another one

"I loathe Bizet’s Carmen. Yes, it is wellcrafted and, yes, it has famous tunes. It is in those universally recognised melodies that the merits of the piece end and my hatred begins. They have been mauled and bent out of shape so much by countless TV ads, arrangements for solo flute with marching band and other Muzak versions that I can only hear the popera as a hit parade.

And then there is the story. As Don José blithely ignores the demure and hopeless passes made at him by Micaela in favour of Carmen, the desire to stand up and scream: “Go and live your life with the nice girl from the village, and tell that Gypsy slapper to sod off” is too much for me. And then there’s the hideous thigh slapping and unnatural cigarette smoking that all Carmens hope passes for hussy behaviour in Seville. It is unbelievable what people think translates as sexy when it comes to staging this long, dull, yet commercial melodrama."

HunkenCarmen

There was wall-to-wall applause after tonight's Carmen premiere at La Scala - except for director Emma Dante, whose appearance provoked an eruption of loud boos. From my seat in the Covent Garden Odeon it was hard to understand why. Perhaps the heavy dose of Catholic symbolism offended. Or the rapey ending - but frankly that loooong final duet needs something to liven it up, and her solution is a plausible one. Or maybe it was the shortage of castanets and thigh-rubbing. Who knows.

Her production wasn't always coherent, but there was plenty to cheer. She drew superb acting from the whole cast - the mark of a solid theatre director. I loved what she did with that perennial problem Micaela, turning her into the messages she bears Don Jose - first the bride, then his sick mother. And even scenery fetishists can't have been too disappointed with the mostly realistic locations and the intricate, colourful costumes.

Jonas Kaufmann's Don Jose was the big draw though, and he didn't disappoint. Beneath his billowing shirt, an immaculately waxed chest was revealed by Act 2's close up cameras, as expertly pummelled by Anita Rachvelishvilli's surprisingly terrific Carmen below. Oh, and he sang pretty well too.

The secondary attraction, Erwin Schrott's Escamillo, was less successful. Too many notes off target, and too many clothes.

With multiple camera angles and zooms sensitively deployed, it was technically the best live opera screening I've seen. Pit close-ups revealed the principal flautist's werewolf hands and even better, Barenboim tweaking out a wedgie (at agonising length) before settling in for the prelude. And the cameras' silent zoom around La Scala's plush-lined burrows and their jewel-draped occupants was far more revelatory than a fancy Met-style 'intermission feature'.

Pity about the sound, which was too low in the first act and too loud afterwards, but I suspect that was the Odeon's fault not the film crew's. Of course no cinema acoustics can possibly hope to replicate the live sound - the big drawback of all movie-opera.

Elina Garanca clicks Alagna's castanets in Carmen

Carmen - Royal Opera House, 6 October 2009

The sizzle may have fizzled from Roberto Alagna's marriage, but he can still hot it up on stage. The chemistry between his Don José and Elina Garanča's Carmen is the main thing going for this otherwise tepid revival of Francesca Zambello's wannabe-West End extravaganza. Despite all the fussy, overpopulated action and assorted live animals Zambello packs between the curvaceous terracotta walls of Tanya McCallin's sets, this Carmen only really takes off when the two of them are together.

Without resorting to the usual strutting heroics seen in this role, Roberto offers a rough-edged but remarkably subtle portrayal of a dutiful soldier flipped from upright to horizontal by his obsessive passion for the stunning Garanča. He's neither as hawt nor as thrilling as Jonas Kaufmann (can't wait to catch him in La Scala's prima live on the big screen) was a couple of years back but then who is?

Garanča is more problematical. Carmen needs a bit of dirt under her fingernails, and no, an elegant smudge of brown greasepaint is not the same thing. Her agile, honeyed voice is elegance personified; there's little to suggest an earthy gypsy heart beating beneath. 

She squirmed awkwardly through the first act, dry-humping everything in Zambello's overstuffed Spanish square from the horse trough to the village idiot like a randy Yorkshire Terrier. Fortunately the matadors didn't turn up till the last act, or she'd have been picking sequins out of her ladybits for weeks. But by this time she's swapped her thigh rubbing and bosom heaving for a more refined life as Escamillo's escort. Her transformation was maybe too complete - I wanted to hear the coarse gypsy beneath the buttoned exterior - but the final showdown with Don José was compelling stuff.

The rest of the cast were underwhelming. Ildebrando D'Arcangelo's Escamillo was even less animated than the docile horse he made his entrance on. Liping Zhang's Micaëla was underplayed. Only Eri Nakamura's lively Frasquita made any impact. Bertrand de Billy held things together, no more, in the pit.

*****  lots more photos over page  ******

See Covent Garden's Carmen for cheap with the Sun - how to apply

 "Do you think opera means lots of fat birds in Viking helmets and lardy blokes screeching like banshees? And that a tenor is the only change you would get from a couple of hundred quid if you were daft enough to buy tickets?"

Perchance you have been reading the Sun then.

Even if not, you can apply for cut-price tickets to the Royal Opera House's Carmen on 3 October, courtesy of the previously-announced promotion.

Applications should be made here or here. You will then be entered into a ballot for the opportunity to apply for up to 4 tickets at £7.50 to £30 each.

Royal Opera House sizzles with the Sun again

After the PR success of last year's Don Giovanni, the Royal Opera House has announced it will once again open its doors to Sun readers this autumn.

Discounted tickets, subsidised by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, will be offered for Carmen on 3 October and the ballet Mayerling on 7 October, and are intended to lure "new faces, people who may not have thought that the Royal Opera House was for them". No doubt a few old faces will wangle their way in too.

Seats will be priced between £7.50 and £30 and will be allocated by ballot, allowing each applicant up to four seats per show. Full details of how to apply will be published in the Sun "later this summer".

 

£10 tickets for English Touring Opera's Carmen at Hackney Empire

 

English Touring Opera start their autumn tour at Hackney Empire this week with La Tragedie de Carmen (an abbreviated version of Carmen - more info here) and Dvorak's Rusalka (more here, including - beat that, Royal Opera House - a rehearsal video).

WhatsOnStage.com are offering tickets for La Tragedie de Carmen on 9 and 11 October at £10 each  - call the box office on 020 8958 2424 and quote 'Whatsonstage' (more details here).

 

What's on this winter at the Royal Opera House

Barely a week into the new season at Covent Garden, and already we're being asked to whip out our Amexes again, this time for November to March productions. Booking opens this week for those who've paid for the privilege, and next month for the common herd.

Rolando Villazón fights through miles of curtain fabric to reprise his Covent Garden debut role in Les Contes d'Hoffmann. Antonio Pappano conducts the elaborate John Schlesinger production, inching ever closer to its sell-by date. Ekaterina Lekhina (Olympia) is a new name to me, but Gidon Saks, Kristine Jepson and Christine Rice promise sturdy support (photo: Clive Barda).

Rolando also submits to a live interview on 10 November. Space is limited, so early booking advised.

The other star vehicle of the season is a new Tim Albery production of Der fliegende Holländer with (cancelitis permitting) Bryn Terfel in the title role. Anja Kampe makes an overdue ROH debut as Senta. Tickets will be restricted to two per customer for this one.

Britten's The Beggar's Opera pops up in the Linbury Studio. The new production by Justin Way (not by conductor Richard Hickox as the website currently claims - there are limits to his talents) is likely to be popular, so again, early booking advised. The excellent and underused Tom Randle is Macheath.

Also to the Linbury comes the long-overdue London debut of George Benjamin's highly-praised ("the most important new opera of the past 25 years") mini-opera Into the Little Hill , coupled with Harrison Birtwistle's Down by the Greenwood Side. The cast includes Susan Bickley and Claire Booth.

The brilliant Willy Decker production of Korngold's Die tote Stadt that I caught in Vienna finally makes its way to London.  Unfortunately Klaus Florian Vogt and Angela Denoke aren't coming with it, but Stephen Gould and Nadja Michael should be a more than passable substitute. And there's the bonus of Gerald Finley in the smaller role of Frank.

David McVicar's t1ts'n'todgers Rigoletto returns with indecent haste. Francesco Meli, Leo Nucci, Ekaterina Siurina and Kurt Rydl are amongst the few cast members who get to keep their clothes on.

Elektra isn't illuminated by Charles Edwards's jumbled production, but with Mark Elder in the pit and a cast that includes Susan Bullock, Anne Schwanewilms, Jane Henschel and Johan Reuter it should at least push some musical buttons.

Even I can't get excited about yet another Turandot revival, but include it for the sake of completeness.

On the ballet side, I have to recommend the triple bill The Seven Deadly Sins / Carmen / DGV: Danse à grande vitesse, especially for the first of these and its wonderful music. Chanteuse Martha Wainwright returns to sing Weill's evocative music, and Zenaida Yanowsky is her dancing doppelganger (photo: John Ross).

ENO's castanet-free Carmen - online video on demand

ENO's recent Carmen will be screened online on the BBC Radio 3 website for a week, starting tomorrow, 3 November, at 6.30.

The streaming will be directed by Sally Potter, who also directed the production itself (to mixed reviews, though like most people I've spoken to, it clicked my castanets).

It's the first time either Radio 3 or ENO have streamed an opera online.

And it's also, as far as I know, the first time you'll be able to watch a whole opera from the performers' perspective (or indeed check out their a$$3$ in detail - who's gonna pack out with their crack out?) -- you can opt to view the performance either conventionally from the audience side, or from a unique backstage angle.