United Kingdom Edinburgh International Festival 2024 [4]: Bizet, Carmen: Soloists, Accentus, Maitrise Populaire de l’Opéra-Comique, Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Louis Langrée (conductor), Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 8.8.2024 (SRT)
Production:
Director – Andreas Homoki
Set designer – Paul Zoller
Costume designer – Gideon Davey
Lighting designer – Franck Evin
Cast:
Carmen – Gaëlle Arquez
Don José – Saimir Pirgu
Micaëla – Elbenita Kajtazi
Escamillo – Jean-Fernand Setti
Frasquita – Norma Nahoun
Mercédès – Aliénor Feix –
Zuniga – François Lis
Moralès – Jean-Christophe Lanièce
Le Dancaïre – Matthieu Walendzik
Le Remendado – Abel Zamora –
You cannot get much more authentic than Carmen at Paris’s Opéra-Comique. After all, they are the company that gave the opera its premiere in 1875 and they have chalked up nearly 3000 performances of it since.
They are at the very centre of this Edinburgh International Festival production in more ways than one, because Andreas Homoki’s production is an exploration of the works’ performance history and reception. The set consists of the Opéra-Comique’s stage, with prompt box, back wall and several curtains to reinforce the theatricality. The cast begin in late-nineteenth century costume for the first two acts but move forwards in time for Act III (roughly Second World War) and Act IV (present day: the crowd watch the bullfight on TV). Don José first appears in modern dress as though in a dream and is pulled into the action of his own opera. It helps that, in the pit, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra play on nineteenth-century brass and timps, with the strings deploying only a little vibrato to give a taste of the period’s performance style.
It is a neat enough idea, if not particularly original after Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal (review here), which did it a lot better. Unfortunately, though, it gets rather caught up in its own cleverness. The onstage curtain swishes open and closed umpteen times during the action, and half the time it is not at all apparent why. More importantly, the metatheatrical idea detracts from the raw emotional energy of Bizet’s story. This of all operas should communicate directly with the audience, with its raw emotions of obsession and betrayal, but you lose that when you spend your energy trying to figure out why the children’s chorus is removing Don José’s clothes, or why Micaëla seems to have to introduce herself to José several times.
Nor was the singing uniformly strong. Saimir Pirgu sang José’s music with power and passion, reaching thrilling climaxes during the character’s moments of crisis, but he lacked subtlety in the duets with Carmen and rarely got beyond one dimension. Jean-Fernand Setti sang Escamillo with the power of a foghorn and as much subtlety, while Elbenita Kajtazi had a tendency to attack Micaëla’s music from below the note.
By far the strongest performance of the night, and quite rightly, was Gaëlle Arquez, whose deliciously rich mezzo-soprano really made Carmen stand out from the crowd; a vamp, a lover, a complete one-off. Her gypsy companions were excellent too so that, in terms of pure singing, the highlights of the evening were the Act II quintet and the card trio of Act III.
The other magic was coming from the orchestra pit where conductor Louis Langrée kept things moving with tight rhythms and taut energy. Remarkably, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra played this music with such zing and panache that you would have thought they’d had it in their blood. They sounded like they were loving every bar, and deservedly got the biggest cheer of the evening.
The production has no more Edinburgh performances, but you can view its Zurich run via OperaVision on YouTube until 15th August.
Simon Thompson