This production of Bizet’s final opera begins promisingly. In a nineteenth-century Spanish market square, an orange tree sits amid high terracotta walls, around which erupts a riot of life – tobacco factory girls, topless bathing, a donkey, a cadre of soldiers and an army of ragamuffin children. Plus, as colourful an assortment of characters as one could expect to encounter while passing a lazy afternoon in Old Seville.
And that was before the others arrived. At one point there were 100 people on stage, including 40 children (and on a school night, too!) So, as a spectacle, it was top class. However, as when midway, one of the smugglers reflects on the Englishmen he met in Gilbraltar – ‘nice chaps’, he says, ‘cold but distinguished’– that sums up Francesca Zambello’s production.
Nancy Fabiola Herrera, as her name suggests, is Spanish, but she is no Carmen – more a recalcitrant school mistress than wild gypsy. She has a fine deep mezzo voice and looks the part; unfortunately, the only thing that was really smoking was her factory colleagues on their cigarillos.
We had been warned that Marcelo Alvarez was suffering with ‘a heavy cold’ (just how damp are the dressing rooms at the ROH?), however, he is a world-class tenor and he didn’t disappoint. But, although a fine actor, he makes a rather hapless Don José.
Fortunately, despite the rather subdued atmosphere, proceedings were lifted a couple of gears with the splendid arrival of the real star of the show – the handsome American Kyle Ketelsen, as the torero Escamillo. He trotted in on a horse, kitted out in a fetching black caballero outfit, replete with hat and red cummerbund, before leaping off his mount to lead some flamenco dancing atop a tavern table, even mangaging the business of wooing Carmen while singing the ‘Toreador’s Song’ in his magnificent baritone. Then it was back on to the horse in a single bound and off into the night taking the populace of the bar with him – Don José didn’t stand a chance.
