Bizet: Carmen
Anne Sofie von Otter / Charlotte
Hellekant (mezzo-sopranos) - Carmen
Marcus Haddock / Ian Storey (tenors) -
Don José
Lisa Milne (soprano) - Micaëla
Laurent Naouri (bass-baritone) -
Escamillo
Jonathan Best (bass) - Zuñiga
Mary Hegarty (soprano) -
Frasquita
Christine Rice (mezzo-soprano) - Mercédès
Colin Judson (tenor) -
Remendado
Quentin Hayes (baritone) - Il Dancaïre
Hans Voschezang
(baritone) - Moralès
Glyndebourne Festival Chorus
London Philharmonic
Orchestra
Philippe Jordan (conductor)
David McVicar (director)
Thursday 25 July and Friday 9 August 2002
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
House, Glyndebourne, England
"Will the Ice Princess melt?" was the question on the lips of most
opera-watchers as they made their way to Glyndebourne for Anne Sofie von Otter's
first attempt at Bizet's sultry gypsy in a new production by the young British
opera director du jour, David McVicar.
Well, the short answer is that she exploded onto Michael Vale's industrial set in Act One, and by her fatal encounter with Marcus Haddock's Don José outside the bullring, she had virtually combusted. The Swedish mezzo may not be everyone's idea of steamy Mediterranean sensuality — she's tall, for a start, towering over everyone except Jonathan Best's Zuñiga on stage, and a natural blonde wearing a Rita-Hayworth-red wig for the occasion — but everything she did as Bizet's heroine blazed with intensity.
This is less of a surprise than it might have been: von Otter has, after all, sung everything from Monteverdi to Elvis Costello, and she's no stranger to French music. In any case, Carmen has, in the 125 years or so since its debut, become a tabula rasa role, almost a blank sheet on which every singer who tackles the part paints her own portrait. Was Maria Callas the sort of singer Bizet had in mind when he wrote his immortal tunes? Or Jessye Norman? Admittedly, neither of those ladies ever sang the role on stage, but both have left an imprint on the role. At Covent Garden in the 1970s and 1980s, Shirley Verrett was succeeded in turn by Tatiana Troyanos, Christa Ludwig, Teresa Berganza and Agnes Baltsa, mezzos whose vocal and histrionic personalities could hardly have been more different, yet they all brought something personal to the role. Who knows which one of them was "right" for the part?
Carmen's capacity for inspiring such different interpretations is part of her eternal fascination, of course, and von Otter makes her own distinctive contribution to the role's performance history. From her first entrance as a tousle-haired ragamuffin, sweaty and unkempt, she's riveting to watch. Perhaps she works too hard at playing the "dirty" girl, provocatively plumping her breasts and caressing her groin at the salivating soldiers, who ogle her through mesh fences like male dogs after an out-of-reach bitch in heat. Von Otter's Carmen is an outrageous tease and very funny, obviously the cigarette factory's star, whose daily lunchtime appearances are evidently the best show in town.
This is brilliantly creative acting, and von Otter develops throughout the opera: seductive when cajoling José to abandon the army, then scornful when he refuses. In the Act III mountain hideout — a striking, if dimly lit empty stage, with only a hand-drawn Mother-Courage-style cart as "scenery" — her scorn has turned to contempt, and you could cut the atmosphere with one of the lethal-looking knives that José and Escamillo draw for their duel. For the Act IV showdown, von Otter's Carmen is a tiger in a flamenco frock, arching her back menacingly and spitting out her hatred with a vehemence that keeps the audience on the edge of its seats. At the close there is blood on the external wall of the bullring — Carmen's — as José slashes her throat and she falls to the ground writhing in agony. The Spain of McVicar's Carmen is shockingly violent and brutal.
Von Otter's singing of the role is perhaps more controversial than her acting, light and soprano-ish — unlike her compatriot Charlotte Hellekant, whose more wiry physique, aristocratic demeanor and smokier contralto tones brought a very different dimension to the production at later performances — and she possibly overinflects the text (in almost flawless French) for some tastes. But that is von Otter: a deeply intelligent woman — possibly too much so for this character who exists primarily on instinct — who brings manifold insights to everything she undertakes. Love her or loathe her, you can't take your eyes off her.
Whether von Otter's Carmen would translate to another production or a bigger house than Glyndebourne must remain debatable. This was probably a one-off (she's in her late 40s, after all) and her musical and verbal subtleties could too easily strike listeners as arty mannerisms at Covent Garden or the Met. But this performance was filmed for television and will doubtless achieve wide distribution on DVD — which may, after all, explain her casting at Glyndebourne. The detail of von Otter's portrayal will surely translate powerfully to the small screen.
Hellekant, for her part, gave a far more contained and physically controlled portrayal of the hot-blooded gypsy than that of her more celebrated compatriot: a cooler, more calculating Carmen whose premonition of her own doom in the Card Scene seemed the product of a morbid spirit. Hellekant was less of the showgirl than von Otter, too, not really as funny — and almost her vocal opposite: darker-toned, stronger at the bottom end of Carmen's compass where von Otter was weak, but less easy at the top. When the production is revived in 2004, the Italian "between-mezzo-and-soprano" Anna Caterina Antonacci will take the title role, which will be something else again.
McVicar's production, too, looks as if it has been conceived televisually. The young Scottish director is renowned for the narrative qualities of his staging — in Britain, at least, he avoids arcane "concepts" — and his mise-en-scène is rich in atmosphere and nuance. Vale's design for Act I cramps the stage unnecessarily with its caged enclosure for the cigarières; there is much noisy tumult as the urchins announce the arrival of the "garde montante" (cavalry) and the cigarette girls enter to the sensuous prelude of their smoking chorus — tumult that obliterates Bizet's music. Philippe Jordan, who got playing of thrilling color, vitality and discipline from the London Philharmonic, should have asserted the score's primacy here. But this is a handsome-looking Carmen (even if the parade of toreadors' bottoms in fancy tights raised a few snickers), with sumptuous Act IV costumes by Sue Blane for the ladies attending the bullfight.
The supporting cast never threatened to upstage von Otter's Carmen. Lisa
Milne's radiant, Mozart-weight Micaëla had a very touching effect in
Glyndebourne's 1,150-seat auditorium; Laurent Naouri's bass-baritone proved more
than serviceable for the Escamillo's music (his idiomatic French was a rare
pleasure). Marcus Haddock and Ian Storey offered contrasting Josés to
counterbalance their respective Carmens: the lyric tenor Haddock a "normal" man
driven to maniacal distraction by his sexual enslavement, the more robust Storey
an introverted brute, a time-bomb on a short fuse waiting to explode with rage
and violence. The smaller parts were all well-taken by British artists: Jonathan
Best's authorative and sexy Zuñiga understandably aroused José's jealous fury;
Mary Hegarty and Christine Rice brought bright allure to the top lines of the
quintet and the big ensembles; Colin Judson and Quentin Hayes were slyly comical
as the smugglers.
