Stowe Opera is one of the secret, unsung delights of British Summer opera. Indeed, the quality of Stowe's recent stagings -- Il Trovatore, Lucia di Lammermoor, then Don Carlo, Rusalka (with the Royal Northern College of Music's Julian Close as the Water Sprite) and Hansel and Gretel -- has been so high that one almost hesitates to dub this year's Carmen their best yet.
But this staging by Yvonne Fontane, who not only sang the title role (after impressing, but less controlledly, as the witch in Hansel last year) but directed the production as well, is indeed Stowe's punchiest and raunchiest to date. Stowe's spring-in-the-step music director, Robert Secret, conducted a Carmen that -- if Ian McKillop's visually impressive, solid set (one fountain that exactly mirrored one in Stowe's abutting Capability Brown landscape) would permit it -- easily deserved to tour; a Carmen that would have graced Sadler's Wells, and not have disgraced the Coliseum.
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If there were drawbacks (there were few; though the lack of surtitles -- or Holland Park-like 'side-titles' -- remains one), they paled into insignificance when compared with the massive merits of this production.
Stowe gave us the sultry mid-Spain and sensual interplay of military and match-girls of Act I; the distinctly nasty twists of Act II, culminating in the cynical dispatch of Gwion Thomas's increasingly engaging -- indeed vulnerable -- Zuniga; the shivery, almost mythic isolation of the smugglers' Act III in the mountains, where Alex Grove's Remendado keeps watch like a sort of ever-present death's head as things to come to a head; plus a kind of rouged hellishness in the last scene -- where it's Sophia Grech's shrillish Mercedes who hands over the fatal knife (such useful things, friends).
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At this final part Fontane (both director and victim) elects -- a brilliant decision that truly works here -- to ignore the usual frenetic last minute crowd onrush; instead, she leaves Don José onstage alone at the end with Carmen's body, like the culmination of some particularly savage piece of film noir. And that's what Carmen is, really: realism opera, two decades before verismo took over, as if to remind us that Massenet, or Traviata and Rigoletto, or even Bellini, were -- like Victor Hugo's true to life dramas -- pointing the way verismo-wards, decades before Puccini had even penned a note.
This was the best sounding chorus Stowe has fielded by a mile. One remembers how audibly and visibly subfusc was the almost apologetic chorus in their otherwise excellent Don Carlo. Fontane is a super-effective director. One only had to watch the chorus moves, its management and manipulation, in Act I, or her shifting blockings also evidenced early in Act IV, to see how clever she is at putting people in the right place. Individual chorus members had small moves, vignettes, flirtations, marital tiffs, modest in themselves, but which added much to the action. No children, alas -- Fontane might have managed those rather well.
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But the women's choir -- both divisi (following the cigarette factory fracas) and tutti -- was impressive; the soldiery and bar attenders all motivated (at the start of Act II the whole of Lillas Pastia's looks spaced-out with sex and drugs, sleaze and snooze), with first-rate delivery (what a difference impeccable tenors make!); the stylised shuffling robbers' chorus -- looking suspiciously like Welsh National Opera's recent staging -- at least partly effective; the choruses greeting Escamillo genuinely massive in sound. One swishing dance, choreographed by Tanya Cusan, was brilliantly pulled off. Everyone knew exactly where to go, what to do: by no means the norm with such productions, given very limited rehearsal time.
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Two directorial classics were the 'mirroring' of Remendado's Act III on-guard position (rearstage left) by Don José (then placed frontstage left) -- a kind of classic trompe d'oeil, as if we were now viewing the action inverted through 180 degrees -- and Carmen herself steering clear of the action during the Lillas Pastia scene: a series of subtle moves that -- given frenetic activity elsewhere -- almost evaded the eye. Slightly naughty, really : so clever were these moody self-repositionings of Fontane that she silently stole the scene.
But then that's Carmen all over -- just as when Micaëla has finished her big Act III aria, and it's at last explained to the mountain folk -- and to Carmen herself -- that she's José's girl, Fontane throws a telling look to heaven and immediately sets about feigning woman-on-woman jealousy. Only when we see the glazed, astonished look on her face as she falls like a crumpled doll -- having walked onto the knife almost like an automaton -- do we realise that for once this ultra-bright Carmen's manipulating skills have given out -- or have they? Unforeseen, unguessed; or has she, we almost wonder, elected for her own death?
The mere fact that this Carmen presented so many paradoxes, and invites so many conflicting responses, is a measure of how far Fontane has managed to penetrate plot and personality, and get others to do so around her. The impressively solid set helped played its part (shades of Russell Flint, though one wasn't too aware of them; instead, McKillop achieved something in the sets that seemed altogether more apt and relevant) -- flawed only by one pinpoint gap between flats, just enough to flag unintentionally, and hence diminish the surprise of, one of Carmen's own ex-factory entries.
McKillop's lighting (he was assisted by Jeremy Walker), capable and forceful as ever, helped a great deal: an interesting range of shades -- although Stowe still tends slightly to overdo the slightly old-fashioned, in-yer-face, 'single colour' cyclorama effect (the sort of thing your find in the opera house at Prague). Far preferable was the folding in of shades and half-colours, and some rather subtle mottled sky effects later on; at the same time, pinks and reds behind the fountain for Carmen's Habanera, an accurate, to-the-second, spot-on lights shift to yellow as she subsequently exits, the striking impact of an orange background as she ominously sends up Zuniga, and twilight to dawn mauves for the Robbers' bleak hideout all added much to the production's sinister and nervy, edge-of-the-seat feel.
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Overall this was an evening of strong solo performances. No gentle lyric soprano from this Micaëla : Catherine Mikic, another RNCM product, was British Youth Opera's Lady Billows not long ago, and she brought some of that punch to both Micaëla's set pieces. No shy little girlie -- you'd have thought she was his mother had come to fetch him. Mikic makes a big noise: Donna Anna -- no meekling role, that -- in Mid Wales Opera's Don Giovanni last season, Mikic has already outsung the resident peacocks as Manon Lescaut for Opera Holland Park and got caught in the Carmen-like crossfire of Puccini's Il Tabarro, singing Georgetta for WNO; she also sang Nedda (Canio's wife in Pagliacci during Opera North's recent run of one-acter operas. A beefy sound; but a name to watch -- and listen -- out for.
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It's to Robert Secret's credit that he draws singers of calibre to Stowe (Fiona Kimm, Robert Poulton in Trovatore and Lucia and Charles Johnston's Posa in Don Carlo were particularly outstanding). I liked the warm tones of the Guildhall-trained French-Trinidadian soprano Simone Sauphanor as Frasquita (she's already done a Countess in Figaro for Opera North); Australian-born baritone Robert Williams, a regular with Opera Queensland in Brisbane, brought an urbane presence to Dancairo, presiding over his smuggling business -- paradoxically -- a bit like a head of police. It would seem Williams can do comedy too: Don Pasquale, Falstaff and even the awful Miles Gloriosus (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) all feature on his distinctly lively CV.
Alex Grove is a rising talent: a young singer well worth casting directors looking out for. Also ex-Royal Northern College -- what a breeding ground Manchester is -- he sang Peter Quint for them, chillingly enough, and a confident Chekalinsky during the all-male build-up in their celebrated The Queen of Spades (starring the future Royal Opera House Vilar Artist, Hubert Francis).
Grove made a particularly vivid impact as Clonter Opera's Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus) last season: he has quite a gift for keeping a show moving. The voice is an interesting one (jury still out); but he's emerging, and sounded pretty impressive here as a fairly gangsterish El Remendado. More importantly, he's a presence : the brisk arrival at Lillas Pastia's, the unpleasantly mock-courteous 'Mon cher Monsieur' (to Escamillo), the almost cynically functional coating-up of the two lead robbers ('terrorists'?) and chorus in preparation for departure to the mountains, and the threatening, collar-up, gaunt figure of Remendado at rear on guard set against an almost Caspar David Friedrich landscape, all contributed to the subliminal sense of danger and threat, so integral an ingredient in good productions of this fateful opera. With his sharp features and dark brow, Grove can do threat rather well. He, too, may be a future Hermann; and in due course, if not cosy and lyrical enough for Britten's Essex -- a future Aschenbach, surely -- or even a tormented Captain Vere.
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There was a lot of variety in Gwion Thomas's Zuniga, too: ruling the roost over Martin Quinn's Morales and José as well, he arrives swaggering, casually arrogant, cigarette variously adroop and cap aslope, plus the ominous twin belts askew -- making him look as likely to have chosen Tupamaro guerilla as a job as Spanish policeman. At one point Thomas seemed almost as isolated as Fontane's Carmen -- with all twelve men onstage chirruping except Zuniga. He is hooked by Carmen's mock gift of an all-too red rose. His nasty leer suggests he is longing to slip one of those belts off his waist and round her neck like a halter -- which he duly does. When José slips the key down her cleavage, Zuniga notices: a nasty sexual obsession grows, which he takes out later by needlessly kneeing the arrested José in the groin: gratuitous everything.
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By Act II at Lillas Pastia's Zuniga has become almost everyone's moll, blind drunk, enjoying the ribaldry, almost idolising Paul Carey Jones's Escamillo, and ultimately as sensual as a woman waiting to be kissed. His intervention 'Le bel officier' becomes all the more ironic; and his demise is nasty too.
Thomas has made a speciality of contemporary opera as well as mainstream -- Birtwistle (Mr Punch), Philip Glass, Nicola Lefanu, Steven Osborne's The Electrification of the Soviet Union, Sally Beamish's Monster -- working extensively with go-ahead companies like Music Theatre Wales, Dublin's equally pioneering Opera Theatre Company, Norway's Opera Vest and Musiek Theater Transparent, the Antwerp-based company which recently premièred the Peter Maxwell Davies/David Pountney Mr Emmet Changes Trains. For that impressive Belgian company Thomas recently sang the role of Janácek in a dramatisation of the Czech composer's relationship with Kamila Stosslová, called Intimate Letters.
Secret's orchestra had many fine moments too. Just occasionally a slightly spongy lead (for example, at the launch of Act IV) might have been clearer if he desisted from using both hands, freeing his (mirroring) second for more detailed help to the singers (as when, the whole team, in one sextet, rushed a double-pace passage and slipped as much adrift of the orchestra as the orchestra -- horns, woodwind -- had slipped adrift of itself. Happily things quickly mended : the ensuing section was perfection itself). Just a couple of times there was overbalance -- most notably of Escamillo in Act IV.
Yet overall this was a thoughtful, well-judged, exciting, sexy, often red-hot Carmen: first-class tuning enhanced Bizet's prelude; one passage after the wounding in Act I emerged like a vital Polovtsian Dance; eerie bassoon and bewitchingly Slavonic-sounding paired flutes and clarinet registered in the little Tchaikovskian march early in Act II (and reemerged ravishingly for Micaëla late in Act III); both Secret and the staging effected a splendidly smooth transition for Escamillo's entry (well managed chorus reactions, and Carey Jones opening up with an impressively big romantic sound (abetted by a fine horn passage) that oddly eluded him in Act III; forceful again after a weakish reentry -- Escamillo needs preceding by picadors, for goodness' sake -- in Act IV).
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In the Carmen-José exchange, the cor anglais sounded a little too dry: no such problem with flute near the end of the Act, where a luscious glow -- Faure into Ravel -- seemed to descend; or the Hispanic duende-like feel of oboe at the start of the last Act.
The brassy Tchaikovskian glooms (trumpet, trombone) that hung over the girls' card game -- especially daunting here -- supplied one of the orchestra's best dramatic moments of the evening. This thoroughly motivated playing from the Stowe Opera orchestra (rhythmically spot-on tympani and triangle not least) paid rich dividends.
Like several of the cast here, Stowe's Don José, Michael Bracegirdle, is an alumnus of Manchester's RNCM, best of all British Music Academies. Bracegirdle's Don José proved both an interesting and an annoying interpretation. For all the opening affability, this Don José seems a psychopath almost before he starts. No wonder by the end -- with slightly overgenerous larding by the make up department -- he enters like Jack the Ripper crossed with a drugged Dostoyevskian Raskolnikov : you wonder what he's on : absinthe? opium? He produces a rather unorthodox, insufficiently controlled, even unpleasant, barky sound at times -- though that didn't prevent him producing lots of passion (freeing her from the handcuffs) and one fabulously tuned passage in high register towards the end of Act I. If ever Stowe wants to mount Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, it clearly has a ready-made Hermann on its doorstep.
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The problem is that this barking-mad, hollow-eyed Don José occasionally let his bark cross over into some of the tender bits, too. Bracegirdle does the whining and shrieking, the jealous and nasty squealing quite magnificently. As he is doubled by low strings in Act III, you feel the fate motif growing under the skin like an inscutable canker. Likewise the 'Adieu pour jamais', 'Oh! Je suis jaloux!' and 'Tu ne m'aime non plus' : each cut to the quick. But here and there the undue edginess informed other parts of José's recitative which didn't need this supercharging. At times, you felt -- pace his Manchester tutors -- the balance between chest sound and diaphragm-support wasn't quite right; and indeed, Bracegirdle came relatively late to the RNCM and to professional singing; to be fair, it's early days yet.
More happily, whenever he sang in close proximity with Fontane's Carmen, this problem eased: their duetting was a pleasure -- they offset each other effectively, and both their mutual balance and Secret's balancing of the orchestra in these passages worked to especially good effect.
But this was Fontane's evening. We meet Carmen before the opera starts, and long before she emerges from the factory, hovering onstage bathed in red, like Medea before the kill, or as if the hungry Furies have already begun gathering. When she finally emerges from work, she ignores us completely, still engaged in some undefined exchange with someone inside, as if to underline the unseen offstage forces, the dark gods -- baleful chance and inevitable mishap -- that haunt this opera. As if to taunt the men, she dances with Frasquita and Mercedes almost lecherously -- like some overtly sexual, or at least sensual, women's coven at which profane outsiders can only guess. She's overdone the leg make-up, overegging a tan (one of only three visual errors Fontane made; the others were one set of less than well mapped-out, meaningless criss-cross moves for herself and José and -- props department playing too safe, perhaps? -- the evidently empty bottles from which everyone was pointlessly 'drinking' -- or rather, visibly failing to imbibe -- assorted liquors).
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Defiance she had in abundance -- rendering her disdainful tralala to a trilliping, nicely metallic-sounding flute. José is denied, repeatedly till late on, the longed for kiss on the lips; rather, once uncuffed, she draws the key across his unprotected crotch like a dismissive fingernail. He is, after all -- though he can't see it -- just one more of her catches. When in the bar scene she emerges from her self-imposed isolation, her slink and swagger is so perfect you'd think she could play Escamillo. Her dance in front of the 'jealous' José, kept by Secret to a wonderful pianissimo as she tap-taps on her silver salver, dances on the table now stripped to her negligee, and massages him above and below with her in filmy apricot, was mesmerising.
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Yet what Carmen needs from José is precisely his quasi-marital violence. She needs to be slapped: it answers to some deep seated yen within her that squares with a need -- for the first time -- to be ruled. His declaration of love both allures and appals her -- witness her mad, big, puzzled eyes. Fontane absolutely is a Carmen, and the strength of her vocal delivery is that it's never full-pelt: she seems to have so much in reserve. Wrapped around by the re-emerging cello 'fate' theme (from the overture and the card game), she sounds overawing -- potentially a great voice, with faint shades of Josephine Veasey as Dido at her most pained, or an anguished Agnes Baltsa. She can do the low notes wonderfully ('La mort'). Indeed, La mort is what she finally walks into, has been walking towards all these years; and la mort claims its due rewards. A terrific performance from Fontane, and a surefire hit for Robert Secret's Stowe.
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