Opera
Remarkable
Rodney Milnes
Carmen (Covent Garden)
You don't need to be a critic to see what s wrong with Covent Garden's revival of Carmen. The sets are amongst the nastiest ever seen there and their current state of disrepair is a blot on the house's good name — seat prices being what they are, not to mention subsidy, you would have thought they could afford the odd pot of paint. Michael Geliot's direction of the principals is purposeful and alert, but the background — fights, escapes, drOles de gens (not one in sight) — verges on the village hall, the attention of the RSPCA might be drawn to the treatment of the poor donkey in the first act. Despite all this, the 449th performance of Bizet's masterpiece in Bow Street was certainly the finest I have seen there and, given the exceptional quality of the singing, anywhere else for that matter. For the first time within living memory at the Garden, Guiraud's ghastly recitatives are dropped in favour of the original dialogue: the piece thus moves as it should, faster and with mercurial changes of mood. While the dialogue is sadly truncated — we miss the line about Jose's epinglette at his first meeting with Carmen, the vital matter of his jeu de paume, and the half-dozen lines in the fourth act that are part of the piece's perfect structure — I can't com- plain: at least the dialogue is there. Musical- ly we are given straight Choudens, which is fair enough (anything rather than Oeser) and if at the next revival the cuts 'Au guar- tier' and the duel duet are restored we will have a near-perfect Carmen text. The main asset of the revival is Colin Davis's conducting. The score had been most carefully prepared, speeds logically related, textures pellucid, orchestral colour deftly sketched in — and there are few more colourful operatic scores. Most important, the fine web of sound from the pit meant that the balance was ideal: the principals never had to strain to be heard and could obey Bizet's frequent instructions to sing softly. For once the Seguidilla really did start pianissimo: sheer magic. There were moments in the first act when Davis's ritar- dandos at the end of musical sentences sounded mannered, but they were few; the only serious quarrel I have is with the ex- cessive rubato in the Flower Song; the piece's natural flow was impeded, and it also got slower and slower, so that there was little opportunity, either physical or emotional, for Jose Carreras to end it with a soft B flat. Never mind, orchestrally full justice was done to Bizet. Mr Carreras's Jose is stunning: I have never seen anything like it. From the start the unblinking eyes and nervous, twitchy movements tell us that we have a tricky customer here, yet it is all cunningly understated. He is hypnotised by the Seguidilla, dazed by events in the second act. Horribly goaded by Escamillo (that duet must be performed in full), his mo- ment of mental disintegration after the ar- rival of Micaela is hair-raising, the cries of `Laisse-mor and `Ma mere' piercing the heart. I thought he overplayed the finale, but he certainly meant everything he was doing. He sings the role magnificently, with every word crystal clear after the French manner and the musical lines warmly shaped. Even the treacherous duet with Micaela was perfectly voiced (with all possi- ble support from Davis in the pit) and cap- ped with as melting an A from the head as one could hope to hear. Yet this outstan- ding interpretation was written off in the Times as 'pallid and vocally unstable'. Words had better fail me.
Agnes Baltsa's Carmen is wholly Mediterranean, earthy, instinctive, and volatile. She took full advantage of the dialogue to achieve neat Stim- mungsbrechung after the Card Aria, and that is the very essence of Carmen. She commands the character's total honesty and sexiness: her interest in Jose stems from the fact that she finds him a joli garcon (and Mr Carreras having lost a stone or two, few ladies in the audience will disagree). What I missed in her ultimately slightly undisciplined interpretation was the Parisian element, the sense of detachment, of being in control, of being the norm against which Jose offends. She loses her temper with him about half an hour too soon, in the third act, whereas Bizet has her cool as a cucumber until the moment before her death. Instinct is not quite enough. Vocally, there is a worrying break be- tween her bronzed chest register and her soft-grained top: it was effectively disguised throughout a beautifully sung first act (the Habanera and the Seguidilla bewitchingly delivered) but became more and more ap- parent as the evening wore on. With this came a suggestion of vocal overstatement to match the dramatic: the castanet dance sounded about as alluring as a fog horn. I don't want to sound too grudging to a remarkable artist, one who is very much the Carmen of the day, but with application of discipline she has it in her to be one of the Carmens of all time.
For the rest, Leona Mitchell sang Micaela absolutely wonderfully but in an indeter- minate language. Benjamin Luxon was miscast as Escamillo. Richard Van Allan was so involved as Zuniga that he almost knocked the set over (I wish he had). Phyllis Cannan (Mercedes) made the art of eating an orange more lascivious than I would have thought possible. There was strong competition for this year's Winston Chur- chill Memorial Prize for French pronuncia- tion. I think Mr Luxon won by a short head from John Dobson (Dancairo). Enough of levity: this is a revival in a hundred, and must be seen.
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