United Kingdom Edinburgh Worldwide Competition 2024 [4]: Bizet, Carmen: Soloists, Accentus, Maitrise Populaire de l’Opéra-Comique, Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Louis Langrée (conductor), Edinburgh Competition Theatre, 8.8.2024 (SRT)
Manufacturing:
Director – Andreas Homoki
Set designer – Paul Zoller
Costume designer – Gideon Davey
Lighting designer – Franck Evin
Solid:
Carmen – Gaëlle Arquez
Don José – Saimir Pirgu
Micaëla – Elbenita Kajtazi
Escamillo – Jean-Fernand Setti
Frasquita – Norma Nahoun
Mercédès – Aliénor Feix –
Zuniga – François Lis
Moralès – Jean-Christophe Lanièce
Le Dancaïre – Matthieu Walendzik
Le Remendado – Abel Zamora –
You can’t get far more genuine than Carmen at Paris’s Opéra-Comique. In spite of everything, they’re the corporate that gave the opera its premiere in 1875 and so they have chalked up almost 3000 performances of it since.
They’re on the very centre of this Edinburgh Worldwide Competition manufacturing in additional methods than one, as a result of Andreas Homoki’s manufacturing is an exploration of the works’ efficiency historical past and reception. The set consists of the Opéra-Comique’s stage, with immediate field, again wall and several other curtains to bolster the theatricality. The solid start in late-nineteenth century costume for the primary two acts however transfer forwards in time for Act III (roughly Second World Conflict) and Act IV (current day: the gang watch the bullfight on TV). Don José first seems in trendy costume as if in a dream and is pulled into the motion of his personal opera. It helps that, within the pit, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra play on nineteenth-century brass and timps, with the strings deploying solely slightly vibrato to offer a style of the interval’s efficiency type.
It’s a neat sufficient concept, if not significantly authentic after Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal (overview right here), which did it quite a bit higher. Sadly, although, it will get quite caught up in its personal cleverness. The onstage curtain swishes open and closed umpteen instances in the course of the motion, and half the time it’s not in any respect obvious why. Extra importantly, the metatheatrical concept detracts from the uncooked emotional vitality of Bizet’s story. This of all operas ought to talk straight with the viewers, with its uncooked feelings of obsession and betrayal, however you lose that if you spend your vitality making an attempt to determine why the kids’s refrain is eradicating Don José’s garments, or why Micaëla appears to must introduce herself to José a number of instances.
Nor was the singing uniformly sturdy. Saimir Pirgu sang José’s music with energy and keenness, reaching thrilling climaxes in the course of the character’s moments of disaster, however he lacked subtlety within the duets with Carmen and barely bought past one dimension. Jean-Fernand Setti sang Escamillo with the facility of a foghorn and as a lot subtlety, whereas Elbenita Kajtazi had a bent to assault Micaëla’s music from beneath the notice.
By far the strongest efficiency of the evening, and fairly rightly, was Gaëlle Arquez, whose deliciously wealthy mezzo-soprano actually made Carmen stand out from the gang; a vamp, a lover, a whole one-off. Her gypsy companions had been wonderful too in order that, when it comes to pure singing, the highlights of the night had been the Act II quintet and the cardboard trio of Act III.
The opposite magic was coming from the orchestra pit the place conductor Louis Langrée stored issues transferring with tight rhythms and taut vitality. Remarkably, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performed this music with such zing and panache that you’d have thought they’d had it of their blood. They gave the impression of they had been loving each bar, and deservedly bought the largest cheer of the night.
The manufacturing has no extra Edinburgh performances, however you may view its Zurich run through OperaVision on YouTube till fifteenth August.
Simon Thompson
