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BBC Concert
Orchestra
conducted by
Peter Robinson
Directed by
David Freeman
Designed by
David Roger
Choreographed
by
Robert North
Carmen
Marcia Bellamy
and
Hyacinth Nicoll Don
Jose
Antoni Garfield Henry
Micaela
Rosalind Sutherland
Escamillo
David Stephenson
Frasquita
Sally-Ann
Shepherdson
Mercedes
Alison
Kettlewell
Dancairo
Adrian Clarke
Remandado
Harry Nicoll
Zuniga
Geoffrey Moses
Morales
Wyn
Pencarreg Lillas
Pastia
Steve Varnom
Guide
David Hobbs
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Royal
Albert Hall
21
February - 7 March 2002 |
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There have been
great operatic moments at the Royal
Albert Hall – Madame Butterfly
in 1998 was one of them, beautifully
staged and performed, making that vast
arena an intimate space by drawing each
member of the encircling multitudes
down into personal contact with disappointment,
loss and grief.
Until the fourth
and final act of this Carmen, however,
the magic does not return. In part it
was because on the evening this reviewer
was present, all three of the Carmens
contracted for the production were unavailable
to sing, Marcia Bellamy because of laryngitis;
so she mimed to Hyacinth Nicoll's admirable
endeavours from her stand at the organ,
and the result was not especially happy.
Hyacinth Nicoll did the best job she
could in the circumstances, but her
rich dark voice is not a Carmen voice,
and there was a dissonance between the
sexy, challenging Marcia Bellamy swinging
her skirt about on stage and mouthing,
and the mature thoughtful tones of Hyacinth
Nicoll not quite synchronising. In any
case, it is virtually impossible to
mime opera; the endeavour of singing
is too much part of the acting.
But the ganging
agley of best-laid plans can be forgiven;
what cannot be forgiven are the two
things that spoil this production. The
first is the distracting amateurish
milling-about of the large chorus –
in excess of fifty adults and twenty
children at times, all stamping about
aimlessly, jumping onto the snake-shaped
stage and off it again, adding little
but taking away much from the action
by interfering with it, obscuring it,
drowning it visually. Only in the last
act, when the crowd is kept still and
dark in the bull-ring while Jose and
Carmen confront each other on an otherwise
bare stage, does drama arrive at last:
and then it is compelling, as it cannot
help but be, with the maddened lover
about to murder the free-spirited wild
girl who has stolen him away from himself.
The second spoiler
is the truly dreadful dialogue –
"Don't talk crap" Jose tells Carmen
at one point, "Give me a break" she
pleads with him at another point, "In
your dreams!" she tells Escamillo when
they first meet and he tells her he
wants her – and so horribly on,
not only cheap, clichéd and flat-footed
in itself but brutally anachronistic
given the 1920s setting. When the audience
is made to squirm by such ineptitude,
and is irritated by the pointlessly
milling crowds of chorus men and women,
what chance have the principals to tell
their tale of fate and the underlying
ghastly contract between love and death?
Antoni Garfield
Henry was a fine Jose; he can sing and
he can act, and in other circumstances
would have been a compelling figure
in the role, eliciting our pity as well
as our foreboding. The production did
little to help him, though, and one
was left concentrating on the surprising
fact that all the main parts were sung
with more vibrato than one usually now
hears, a style surely and happily going
out of fashion. Rosalind Sutherland
sings Micaela with a full round voice
that would be wonderful with less vibrato,
and the same applies to David Stephenson
as Escamillo. He, incidentally, has
marvellous stage presence, and is destined
for stardom.
Under Peter
Robinson's baton the BBC Concert Orchestra
was excellent, and indeed were the best
thing about the evening.
AC Grayling |
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