When you talk to the people behind the production of Bizet's opera Carmen heading to Canberra, they have to stop and think about where they actually are.
If it's Tuesday, it must be Dubbo is the idea.
Opera Australia's touring production has been whizzing through 35 destinations, starting at Dandenong near Melbourne on May 14 and finishing at Albany in Western Australia on August 21. Canberra is around the half-way mark on July 8 to 10.
Touring presents challenges. The stage has to be free standing and fit into both the biggest and the smallest venues. It's been designed to be constructed easily out of scaffolding anywhere and within a day. It takes the company from seven in the morning to three o'clock to do it at each venue.
The usually large cast and orchestra are pared down to 15 singers in what is usually a big chorus opera, with 10 members of the orchestra. Soloists double up in the chorus.
And the children's chorus has to be recruited in each place. The young singers aged nine to 14 are chosen and rehearsed for the weeks before by a local choir master, and then just before the company sweeps into town for the show, the Opera Australia's Children's Chorus Master, Kate Stuart, arrives to give them a four-hour rehearsal.
"It's fantastic that these children are learning French and learning two songs in French," she said. All-told, she reckons 650 children will have been involved throughout the three months of the tour.
Carmen is one of the most popular operas, with a tune a minute. It has high drama. It's a contest between right and wrong, with love and death involved. Who will end up with the sensuous Carmen? Will it be solid Don José or the dashing bullfighter Escamillo? Whose tears will it end in?.
Director Matthew Barclay has decided to set it in Spain in the 1960s under the dictatorship of Franco. The gypsies are outsiders in an ultra-puritanical culture. "They are the 60s counter-culture," he said.
He has depicted Carmen herself as a sort of sultry Sophia Lauren figure. On the other hand, Micaela, the wholesome girl from back home trying to keep hold of her man as he is drawn to Carmen, is modelled more on Audrey Hepburn.
But the aim is to make it seem real to audiences throughout Australia, from Darwin down through Tennant Creek to Alice Springs to Hobart, and from Geraldton in Western Australia to Rockhampton.
"It could be Bathurst or Orange. These characters feel like they could drive through town," the director said.
They are real people but also outsiders: "I've tried to bring it some familiarity, in that the characters are recognisable but they are gypsies and part of that culture of the occult.
"They would have been considered as dissidents under the Franco regime."
Matthew Bailey says his production also "tried to explore the explosion of domestic violence that's taken place around Australia".
"Carmen is the story of a woman who has been victimised by a man who wants to control her. It's a domestic violence story. I would like audiences to feel it speaks to them.
"Carmen is naturally a fighter for her freedom and identity."
A common way to play the opera is to depict Carmen as a wily manipulator of men. The director says that this interpretation misses the full context.
"If you reduce her to a woman who is trying to manipulate men, using sex as a weapon, that reduces her for modern experience.
"She wants to love. It's a love affair but they are fated to collide and explode."
Whatever the gender politics and the sociology of this production, the opera does have great tunes. Feet will tap.
- Carmen will be at the Canberra Theatre Centre from July 8 to 10. For tickets go to canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
