Carmen

Published Monday 7 July 2008 at 14:00 by Edward Bhesania

An exotic flavour of Seville is one thing you won’t get in David McVicar’s staging of Bizet’s tragic-comic opera Carmen, new for Glyndebourne in 2002. A wire fence separates the drab, industrial cigarette factory from the soldiers’ guardroom in Act I and a plain, crumbling wall presents the exterior of the bullring in Act IV. McVicar’s brutal deglamorisation of the settings bring the characters’ passions, jealousies and anxieties into sharper focus, but with Act II’s cramped, dimly-lit underground tavern and an especially dark, misty smugglers’ den in Act III, the effect seems relentless.

There’s plenty of colour, though, in Tania Kross’ Carmen. She uses her physical stature to create an entirely uninhibited, passionate and domineering lover, to the extent that her Don Jose gets somewhat slapped about. Defiant until her grisly end, there’s never a sense of her being a victim - only that she has resolutely defended her philosophy of freedom. Brandon Jovanovich as Don Jose sings with fervour and convincingly portrays a confused man consumed with jealousy. Wayne Tigges is a smooth, rather than exuberant, Escamillo, and if Kate Royal fails to make us warm to the rejected Micaela, in Act III she sings absorbingly.

The quartet of smaller roles - Frasquita and Mercedes (sung by Jael Azzaretti and Katherine Rohrer) and the brigands Le Dancaire and Le Remendado (Richard Mosley-Evans and Loic Felix) is well cast. But the highlight is the conductor Stephane Deneve, who makes a thrilling Glyndebourne debut, combining bracing detail with supple pacing.

Despite a tightly-coiled stand-off between Carmen and Don Jose at the opera’s climax, this production doesn’t quite lift off the stage. But it’s worth catching for Kross’ daringly coarse Carmen and the brilliant playing in the pit.