United Kingdom Bizet, Carmen: Soloists, Royal Opera Refrain, Orchestra of the Royal Opera Home / Sesto Quatrini (conductor). Broadcast stay (directed by Rhodri Huw) from the Royal Opera Home, Covent Backyard, and seen at Cineworld, Newport, Isle of Wight, 10.11.2026. (DH) ****
« Je ne sais pas si dans sa vie cette fille-là a jamais dit un mot de vérité ; mais, quand elle parlait, je la croyais : c’était plus fort que moi. » (‘I don’t know whether or not that woman ever spoke a phrase of fact in her life, however when she did communicate, I believed her – I couldn’t assist myself.’)
That’s Don José on Carmen in Mérimée’s novella. Carmen the opera is lifeless within the water if Carmen herself lacks charisma. On this second revival of Damiano Michieletto’s 2024 Royal Opera manufacturing, Ginger Costa-Jackson has charisma after which some. What’s most fascinating about the way in which she workouts it’s the impact she has on others. In an opera the place nearly each necessary relationship revolves round Carmen or is mediated by her, Costa-Jackson is excellent at exhibiting you the way she workouts that energy over others, in a manner which took me straight again to the novella (fittingly, the spoken dialogue is credited ‘after Meilhac, Halévy and Mérimée’). Mérimée’s José can’t assist himself, and Russell Thomas’s Don José at instances appears nearly her puppet. I don’t imply that as a criticism of his appearing: he’s in thrall to her in a manner I’ve hardly ever seen on this opera, and that’s right down to the ability of Costa-Jackson as an actor. Her voice is equally arresting. It’s terribly highly effective and terribly clear, with a darkish decrease register that’s distinctive with out being conventionally lovely. I think she has thought exhausting about how she desires this Carmen to sound; nothing appears left to probability. Within the Seguidilla, ‘Près des remparts de Séville’, for instance, when she is first alone with José, she invests her singing with nice flexibility and color, matching the alluring tavern she conjures up for him. Within the darker world of the Act III Card Scene, as she attracts loss of life twice within the ‘Air des cartes’, the voice has modified totally: unfathomably darkish and imbued with a deadening stillness.
Simply as placing is the way in which Costa-Jackson the performer appears to attract performances out of these round her. Once more, that’s most noticeable with Thomas. At first we see an immensely strong-looking man, with a massively highly effective voice and presence, who doesn’t fairly know react to her; then we watch her pull him in, and his efficiency ignites from what had appeared a damp-squib begin. By the Flower Tune, ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetée’, his singing is classy, but it surely has the ethical and metaphysical power of a damaged, enslaved soul too. Costa-Jackson’s impact on others was additionally evident from a wonderful interval function on the Jette Parker Artists participating within the manufacturing, within the programme’s Twenty fifth-anniversary season. It was fascinating to listen to Seohyun Go and Ellen Pearson describe how a lot Costa-Jackson had given them and the way she had taken them below her wing. One thing of that mutual belief was palpable on the stage, too. Each Go and Pearson had been wonderful.
What of the manufacturing itself? Readers of Seen and Heard could have seen my colleagues Colin Clarke’s and Jim Pritchard’s evaluations of the 2024 staging (right here and right here), so briefly: we’re in a poor rural neighborhood in Nineteen Seventies Spain, the place Franco, or his ghost, nonetheless lurks. The run-down buildings of Paolo Fantin’s units, and the half-hearted efforts of Zuniga and his males to maintain order when their hearts aren’t actually in it, give the entire thing an end-of-an-era really feel. The setting works nicely, and characters of each variety are introduced plausibly and really feel true to life. Maybe the manufacturing’s single largest acquire is its Micaëla, sung right here by Adriana González. Sensibly, even primly dressed and sporting giant spectacles, she is maybe not fairly the Micaëla earlier productions have led us to count on, however the characterisation works rather well right here. She is clever, deeply delicate and compassionate, and González makes her merely heartbreaking; I’ve by no means seen a Micaëla that has moved me a lot. Her voice is beautiful, however what’s most exceptional is the management and restraint she brings to her Act III aria, ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante’. I wouldn’t have complained had the viewers applauded for even longer than they did.
Alexander Vinogradov’s Escamillo is super, by no means extra so than in Act III, when he arrives on the smugglers’ camp and encounters Don José. He tells José he’s head over heels in love (‘Je suis amoureux, mon cher, à la folie’), but it comes out as completely calculating; merely the phrases he must say to make his newest conquest. The cynicism is there in the identical breath, when he observes that Carmen’s affairs by no means final six months. His singing is authoritative, and he has a stagey form of magnetism (applicable for his commerce) each time he seems. Barnaby Rea makes essentially the most of Zuniga, who on this staging embodies that end-of-an-era really feel; he is superb at conveying authority that’s curtailed, a person with little actual company.
Different members of the Jette Parker contingent are excellent too. Go and Pearson be a part of Giorgi Guliashvili’s Dancaïro, Emyr Lloyd Jones’s Remendado and Costa-Jackson within the Act II quintet, ‘Nous avons en tête une affaire’, an actual spotlight of the night, musically completed however, extra importantly, dramatically coherent and forceful.
The good power of Michieletto’s manufacturing, then, lies within the relationships between characters and the psychological depth they purchase. What doesn’t work so nicely? For me, three issues. First, as well-documented by now, Michieletto places Don José’s mom (Ruth Alfie Adams) on stage, a grim embodiment of destiny who seems at numerous moments brandishing the tarot card of loss of life. It’s the form of thought that may have labored on paper, however in apply, and notably on this revival, it comes throughout as risibly melodramatic. It’s a machine that has no actual energy, and, quite the opposite, in key scenes it dangers undermining them altogether. It provides nothing to the night’s stress, which was there regardless.
Second, a bunch of kids (from the Royal Opera’s Youth Opera Firm) seem between the acts, charmingly sufficient, holding up placards to indicate how a lot time has handed. The difficulty is that they distract from Bizet’s music and immediate the viewers to react in ways in which really feel inappropriate and disruptive. Nor does the machine appear to have a lot to do with the remainder of the manufacturing. I got here to this Carmen having not too long ago seen Phelim McDermott’s Così fan tutte from the Met, the place indicators are used in the course of the overtures in a manner which feels much more rooted within the staging, and with far larger theatricality and wit. By comparability, the machine right here feels poorly built-in. Not that the Covent Backyard viewers wanted any excuse to make a noise whereas the music was enjoying, in the course of the entr’acte between Acts I and II, the conductor, Sesto Quatrini, needed to flip and provides the auditorium a sustained fierce look to silence chatter that had carried on nicely into the music – a stunning second in one in all our main opera homes.
Third, the refrain. At instances it’s as if Michieletto wasn’t fairly certain what to do with them, some extent Jim Pritchard additionally made in 2024. They sing very nicely after all however are usually required to group across the stage going by way of reasonably primary motion or dance, and there’s a common clumsiness and awkwardness about their stage placement all through. That’s maybe most evident in Act IV, exterior the toreador’s dressing room, the place the route to the refrain seems to have been: ‘Now, might you all simply bounce up and down quite a bit?’ It isn’t very inspiring, they usually might have been higher used.
Quatrini’s conducting was one of many highlights of the night time: full of life, incisive, delicate and responsive. The interval gave us a glimpse of him in rehearsal with a number of the Jette Parker Artists, and he’s clearly a consummate musician – somebody we should always see extra of at Covent Backyard. The orchestra responded in variety.
The cinema presentation was, as ordinary, of a really excessive customary. Rhodri Huw’s display screen route allow us to see the whole lot necessary, the interval options had been illuminating, and Jess Gillam is as pure and relaxed a bunch as I can think about. She did a terrific job introducing the opera and speaking to Oliver Mears, Director of Opera, and Elaine Kidd, Head of the Jette Parker Artists Programme. Kidd paid a touching tribute to the late David Gowland for his management of the Programme since its inception.
Regardless of its flaws, then, this was a extremely gratifying night time on the opera. Psychologically it felt grounded, and that’s the single most necessary factor: this was a drama shifting inexorably to its conclusion from the very first assembly between Don José and Carmen. Which is maybe why the mom and her tarot card felt so superfluous. Mérimée’s Carmen wants nobody to indicate her the playing cards. Going through José on the finish of the novella, she reads her destiny for herself: « Tu veux me tuer, je le vois bien ; c’est écrit, mais tu ne me feras pas céder. » (‘You wish to kill me, I can see that; it’s written, however you’ll by no means make me give in.’) Costa-Jackson’s Carmen knew it too and gave no floor.
Dominic Hartley
Featured Picture: Ginger Costa-Jackson (Carmen) and Don José’s mom (Ruth Alfie Adams) (© Mihaela Bodlovic
Forged:
Carmen – Ginger Costa-Jackson
Don José – Russell Thomas
Micaëla – Adriana González
Escamillo – Alexander Vinogradov
Zuniga – Barnaby Rea
Frasquita – Seohyun Go
Mercédès – Ellen Pearson
Dancaïro – Giorgi Guliashvili
Remendado – Emyr Lloyd Jones
Moralès – Sam Hird
Bohemian – Dawid Kimberg
Marchande d’oranges – Miranda Westcott
Don José’s mom – Ruth Alfie Adams
Creatives:
Director – Damiano Michieletto
Revival director – Dan Dooner
Set designer – Paolo Fantin
Costume designer – Carla Teti
Lighting designer – Alessandro Carletti
Dramaturg – Elisa Zaninotto
Refrain director – William Spaulding
