Last year, when Damiano Michieletto’s production of Carmen first appeared at the Royal Opera House, Aigul Akhmetshina’s received great praise for her performance in the title role. This year she has returned even better. This Russian mezzo-soprano has developed into the perfect Carmen. Quite apart from a beautiful voice which is particularly powerful on the low notes in Bizet’s score, her acting is deliciously commanding, making it clear why she has total control over the many men in her life.
My reservations about Michieletto’s production, however, have remained. This Italian director is full of ideas, some of which are strikingly effective while others vary from unnecessary to confusing. On the plus side, all the characters are well developed, with the badly behaved children in the town square at the start creating just the right atmosphere for the mayhem that follows. The smugglers in the following act are also convincing as seriously professional law-breakers.
On the other hand, I still do not see why Michieletto has created an extra characters in the form of a woman dressed in black who appears right at the beginning slowly making her way silently across the stage then returns enigmatically later. Apparently she represents Don Jose’s mother, but whether she is meant to symbolise his conscience or to be some sort of mystic ghostly presence is totally unclear and adds nothing to the story.
Also having the children appear at the start of the later acts holding up cards saying, in French, “two weeks later” or “a few days later” is a nice, gentle touch when it first appears, but their final appearance when the cards are jumbled is just a poor attempt at humour when it is least needed. A muted and rather embarrassed reaction from the audience confirmed this opinion.
The role of Don Jose, used, loved and finally rejected by Carmen, was excellently played by Italian tenor Freddie de Tommaso. Often portrayed as a rather hapless character, totally under the spell of Carmen, Tommaso’s Don Jose appears more complex, struggling to deal with the conflicts created by life, love and his responsibilities. As Carmen’s attitude towards him varies from the passion of love to the destructive passion of total rejection, the scenes between her and Don Jose are convincingly gripping.
Compared with the strong performances of Akhmetshina and de Tommaso, Polish bass-baritone Lukasz Golinski is less convincing as Carmen’s new love Escamillo, but he brings a nice touch to his fight with Don Jose, using his jacket as a matador’s cape. Chilean soprano Yaritza Veliz was excellent in the role of Micaëla, who comes to plead with Don Jose to return to his mother. Like Akhmetshina, Veliz was a member of Covent Garden’s Jette Parker Young Artists programme which it is good to see continuing to produce singers of such a high calibre.
Altogether, I’d say this is a five-star performance of a three-star production of a glorious opera.