Review: Carmen at The Regent Theatre

Review by Greg Gorton

When I was first starting to learn about Opera, I asked people which one I should start with and absolutely everyone agreed that it should be Carmen. Even heathens, they said, would know some of the songs from Carmen. Plus it has few main characters, an easy to follow plot, and a decent pace.

They were right, of course. Carmen is a fabulous “beginners opera”, I think that Opera Australia was hoping to make it all the more accessible with their latest production of the classic. With “modern” designs and frenetic choreography, there is an impression that OA was attempting to do to Carmen what Baz Luhrmann did to Romeo and Juliet. Not exactly modernise it, but create a hyper-real modern world in which to explore the text.

To my admittedly untrained ear, this opera sounded magnificent, with not a weak voice in the house. Orchestra Victoria provided the beautiful music, and conductor Clelia Cafiero provided us with an energetic and passionate offering of the incredible Bizet work. I cannot emphasise enough how much I enjoyed simply getting to experience this opera as a full live experience.

While I can speak little to the finer elements of music and voice, I can speak to performance, and I must just say that the women in this opera are something special. While Danielle de Niese was rightly compelling as the powerful, independent Carmen, a woman doomed by the very fact that she dared to live on her own terms. Likewise her friends, played by Angela Hogan and Jane Ede, existed very much as individuals surviving in a world not designed for them. The performance I most enjoyed, however, was that of Jennifer Black as Micaela. Her aria, “Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante”, performed alone on stage, left me completely spellbound, while her presence in other scenes gave Abraham Breton’s version of Don Jose far more colour than it otherwise had.

Some of my thoughts on the performers, I admit, took time to set apart from other unusual choices. For example, it was only after separating Phillip Rhode’s Escamillo from his baffling costumes that I realised how well he captured the arrogant yet sensitive toreador.

Written late in the nineteenth century, the original Carmen was a clear signal that there was a type of opera that was evolving into the musicals we know today. It might be from this history, or else a connection to Luhrmann as mentioned earlier, that had OA attempt very different design and direction choices for this production. I’d only recently seen another Anne-Louise Sarks production (Rebecca) and this two had elements of her style - over the top visuals that make for great photos, sometimes-too-busy or gimmick directorial choices, great slathers of passion that often allows audience to accept the others.

In Carmen, you will either love or hate the design. Taverns are now almost-nightclubs, bullfights are now a halloween-party event, and hiding in the mountains is living on a street. Each and every set inexplicably contains large amounts of christian iconography,  and there are multiple design choices that might have you scratching your head and asking “they know Mexico isn’t Spain, right?” However, it is bright and colourful, and I can see a lot of audiences enjoying it for how willing the production is to say “this looks good, so it doesn’t have to make sense.”

Where I most struggled was with the directorial decisions that were more distracting than anything else. From chorus members with nothing to add and a random basketballer, to the inability to decide what level of realism it wants from the acting, this show doesn’t know what to do with everything that isn’t the beautiful music and voices.

I will give some credit: Sarks did a fine job in having us pretend that the vicious animal cruelty of bullfighting was instead just a festival, the bulls just actors, no blood involved. But when it came to addressing sexism, classicism, or racism, there appeared no solution but to pretend they did not exist.

For a person who hasn’t experienced a live opera before, OA’s Carmen is definitely worth looking into as part of a special night out. For those who want more traditional fair, and those of us who simply enjoy a little bit of verisimilitude, I’d honestly still recommend going. Just sit back, enjoy the audio, and watch Cafiero rock that baton. 

Image Credit: Jeff Busby