Carmen review – Aigul Akhmetshina is electrifying in simmering, naturalistic staging

With its thorny sexual politics, a new production of Carmen can be a minefield. Prosper Mérimée’s original novella treats his fiercely independent central character with respect, but over the years the heroine’s brutal murder on show in Bizet’s opera has often embraced the voyeuristic characteristics of the bullfight taking place offstage.

As in his Olivier award-winning Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, Damiano Michieletto deflects some of that by creating a sense of a close-knit community fraying at the edges. Carmen’s tragedy becomes just another small town calamity, a symptom of social claustrophobia heightened by the oppressive Mediterranean heat. Indeed, there are numerous echoes of Michieletto’s former production, from the revolving stage to the tufts of grass thrusting up through the concrete.

Paolo Fantin’s evocative sets, vividly illuminated by Alessandro Carletti, suggest rural Andalucía rather than Seville, the remote horizons emphasise the isolation of the town’s jaded cops and two-bit smugglers. In this sexual pressure cooker, the attraction of Carmen, a free-spirited but troubled woman, for the emotionally wounded Don José is a dysfunctional car crash in the making. Confined interiors create intense playing spaces, from a single-room police station to a sex club and a battered van. Carla Teti’s sweaty singlets and spray-on hot pants locate the action in the 1970s.

View image in fullscreen

So far, so good, and much of Michieletto’s naturalistic staging holds water. While it’s ultimately unclear if the old lady in high-combed black mantilla is actually José’s mother, she’s an effectively chilling manifestation of fate. There is the odd logical inconsistency, however, and the saccharine use of the kids in the entr’actes is a misstep that sits awkwardly with the final graphic strangulation.

By the time she appears at Glyndebourne this summer, Russian mezzo soprano Aigul Akhmetshina will have headlined three new productions of Bizet’s opera in under six months. Not bad for a 27-year-old who only five years ago was on the company’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. Vocally she is electrifying, the crushed-velvet lower register rising to a free and easy top with a welcome bel canto flexibility. Dramatically she convinces too, her actions occasionally arbitrary but always complex.

The effortlessly elegant Polish tenor Piotr Beczala is an outstanding, thoroughly convincing Don José combining clarion high notes with some breathtakingly hushed singing. Michieletto’s moralising, bespectacled Micaëla is an original take, sung with searing purity by Olga Kulchynska. Kostas Smoriginas is a firm-toned, sharp-suited toreador in acid yellow flares with Sarah Dufresne and Gabrielė Kupšytė standing out as Frasquita and Mercédès.

In the pit, Antonello Manacorda drives the score hard while finding plenty of original things to say in a richly sculpted interpretation. Opening up some of the traditional cuts pays dividends. The ROH Chorus, and especially the children, sing with persuasive enthusiasm.