Review

Carmen performed on the lake-stage at Bregenz Festival was a knockout – review

Scott Hendricks and Gaelle Arquez in Carmen at the Bregenz Festival, Austria
Scott Hendricks and Gaelle Arquez in Carmen at the Bregenz Festival, Austria Credit: Johannes Simon/Getty Images

The lake-stage in Bregenz is a venue for theatrical spectaculars, and Kasper Holten’s production of Carmen on Es Devlin’s extraordinary set was a knockout. The design concept emerged when Holten met Ms Devlin after her visit to Seville and they tossed cards in the air to represent the fate Carmen feels she cannot escape – recreated here on a massive scale for the audience of 7,000 watching from the lakeside amphitheatre.

The cards are each 30 sq metres in area, flying between hands 30 metres apart, one holding a cigarette 6 metres long. In Act III as the beautiful Micaëla of Elena Tsallagova finds the smugglers’ hideout, singing with powerful emotion of her beloved Don Jose and the evil wiles of the woman who has captured him, she stands high up on one of the hands. Then, unbelievably, she climbs above the flying cards that reach 24 metres above the lake, swinging from one to another, a mountaineering feat both daring and terrifying.

Gaelle Arquez and Daniel Johansson in Carmen
Gaelle Arquez and Daniel Johansson in Carmen Credit: EPA/GIAN EHRENZELLER

From such dizzying heights, Carmen’s death at the end reaches the depths as Don Jose held her under the water to drown. The lake itself is part of the production, the front of the stage lowering to create the impression of water rising, and the Act II dance at Lillas Pastia’s gradually becoming a wild water dance. It’s terrific fun. Zuniga is shot at the end of that act, dumped into one of the smugglers’ boats, to be later tipped into the lake, and Carmen makes her escape at the end of Act I by leaping into the water and swimming off.

On the rain-drenched opening night, Carmen herself was dramatically performed by Gaëlle Arquez, with Daniel Johansson a strongly passionate Don Jose, under sensitive and energetic musical direction by Paolo Carignani. But it was the staging that really carried the evening, with Anja Vang Kragh’s colourful costumes, Bruno Poet’s excellent lighting and Luke Halls’s video projections that allowed the cards to show varying faces – a queen of hearts for Carmen and knave of clubs for Don Jose. If opera is theatre, and it certainly should be, then this big-audience production serves it brilliantly. Rain was the only problem, but as I entered the auditorium at the start of a thunderstorm a charming young English woman suggested that I go back and buy a waterproof covering. I did. Thank you, Es Devlin.

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