Carmen – review

The Royal Opera's latest revival of Carmen marks the sixth outing of Francesca Zambello's 2006 staging, and things are starting to fray a bit. A big, unwieldy amalgam of spectacle and psychodrama, it was far from ideal when it was new.

Some of its excesses have, in fact, been toned down: there's less abseiling than there once was, and also less livestock, though Escamillo (Vito Priante) is still ludicrously allowed to ride into the tavern on horseback. The big production numbers, in which twerking is passed off as some sort of flamenco, are wearing in the extreme; none of it is particularly erotic.

The psychodrama, once insightful, has also lost some of its punch. Most of us think of Bizet's masterpiece as a probing analysis of male anxieties about independent female sexuality. Anita Rachvelishvili's Carmen and Roberto Alagna's José, however, play out the central tragedy in conservative, old-fashioned terms as the narrative of a good guy ruined by a tart.

Rachvelishvili turns thigh-flashing into a mannerism, but sounds good, once past an unsteady habanera. Alagna acts his socks off, but belts his music fortissimo. The final confrontation is genuinely scary, though the emotional journey towards it is neither as complex nor as involving as it could be.

Verónica Cangemi's appealing Micäela was having trouble with some of her high notes on opening night. Priante, compact and mercurially sexy despite an ill-fitting pair of chaps, is impeccably stylish, if small-voiced. Conductor Daniel Oren favours extreme speeds, adopting an adagio approach in moments of sensuality, but driving it hard elsewhere. The excision of the opening chorus of act four remains unforgivable.