Like the company’s previous productions, Robin Norton-Hale’s new staging of Bizet’s ever-popular work for OperaUpClose is a slimmed-down affair. The hard-working band consists of just four players, there’s no independent chorus (though some of the principals double as chorus on an ad-hoc basis), and there are quite a few cuts, some of which undermine the plot’s continuity during the second half.
That said, Norton-Hale draws committed performances from a cast that is uniformly strong vocally, even if her view of Carmen as mortally afraid of Don José would be hard to sustain from the opera’s original libretto, as opposed to her free, if generally snappy, English translation; surely it is one of the things that makes Carmen such a comprehensively fascinating heroine that she is utterly fearless of anyone and anything.
Odd, too, is the erasing from the text of any suggestion of Carmen’s Roma background; yet the character’s status as a representative of the “other” is arguably crucial in making her, as far as Don José is concerned, both seriously alluring and on another level threatening.
Tackling the protagonist in the first of two casts, mezzo Flora McIntosh brings solid conviction to her singing, while registering dramatically as not altogether dissimilar to soprano Louisa Tee’s Micaëla – a character invented by the librettists to provide maximum contrast to the wilful Carmen. Yet Tee also provides impressive vocalism, effectively matching Anthony Flaum’s powerful tenor as the nervy, obsessive José, and by baritone Richard Immerglück as the confidently macho bullfighter Escamillo.
The secondary roles go well, too, with standouts from Julian Debreuil’s edgy Zuniga, Lawrence Olsworth-Peter’s laid-back Remendado and Tom Stoddart’s constantly smiling Dancairo, who suggest – perfectly plausibly – that the Sevillian soldiers are not above the odd gig moonlighting as smugglers, when the opportunity presents itself.
- At Soho theatre, London, until 19 September. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
