by Young women wear hot pants and read their fortunes in the cards. Listless men in police uniforms sweat, drool and rule. Spain, in the Royal Opera House’s Carmen, newly staged by Damiano Michieletto and directed by Antonello Manacorda, is a semi-urban wasteland at the end of the General Franco era. Long is a country steeped in God, race and the family has fallen across modernity. Girls bare their midriffs and want freedom: a more urgent and credible cry in the mid-1970s update than when it was when Georges Bizet’s masterpiece was new a century before, in 1875 (and flopped).
Starring the outstanding Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina in the title role, the ROH Carmen is a dream come true. (The second cast will be led by another Russian, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, from May 12.) Still only 27, former ROH artist Jette Parker, Akhmetshina inhabits the part in all its nuances. She shows vulnerability, has vocal athleticism and is physically strong. His impatient but relentless Don José is Piotr Beczala; they have the same roles together in Carrie Cracknell’s new show Carmen at the New York Met. The golden top notes of the Polish tenor match Akhmetshina’s own energy in energy and brilliance: he is very quiet suggesting, in gesture and demeanor, a man tightly knotted by duty and desire.
The ROH Youth Opera Company, a chorus of children aged between 9 and 13, performed with enthusiasm and captured our hearts
Now the Carmen of choice around the world, Akhmetshina is too sharp, too fiery, to fall back on the habit. She will no doubt create a completely different character when she plays the role at Glyndebourne this summer (directed by Robin Ticciati, directed by Diane Paulus), just as she did when she jumped onto the stage aged 22. ROH Barrie Kosky at the end of 2018. Kosky’s radical feat was a tour de force, as he was placed on a flat ladder. Not everyone liked him. I did. His ROH life, like that of his title character, was short, eventful and provocative. It could not last.
Designed by Paolo Fantin, with costumes by Carla Teti and lighting by Alessandro Carletti, Michieletto’s production looks timeless. In an almost empty stage, a cabin sees the action, serving as a police station, nightclub, pre-foot changing room. A grid of 100 small lights shines down, heightening the mood of eternal monotony and enclosure. ROH’s successful double bill rotation shows the use of the same creative team Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci.
There is a clever touch. Putting the woman who is powerful by her absence – Don José’s mother – on stage in a black mantilla, holding a death card is not the same. Nor was it smart to portray poor plucky Micaëla as a cardigan-and-specs sad. Or maybe this visual cliche has now come full circle and is news. The exceptional and lyrical Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska, in her ROH debut, was a triumph, regardless.
Music standards give this Carmen its edge and its excitement, and it is worth capturing at the upcoming cinema relays. Manacorda explored the fire and detail of the score, with the ROH orchestra, especially solo strings and woodwinds, alert, subtle, expansive. Undoubtedly, the spoken dialogue – always a problem, and here in French which was not too sure – contributed to a stop-start feel to the performance. That wasn’t Manacorda’s fault. He had a great sense of speed and momentum. Kostas Smoriginas as Escamillo, tasteless in a lime green raw silk suit, Sarah Dufresne as Frasquita and Gabrielė Kupšytė as Mercédès led the large and admirable supporting ensemble. The ROH choir was joined by the ROH Youth Opera Company, a chorus of children aged between 9 and 13 who sang enthusiastically and captured our hearts.
Maybe some of these young musicians will want to join the National Youth Choir, or its smaller music, one day National Youth Chamber Choir: almost two dozen talented people between the ages of 18 and 25, many of whom are entering professional careers. As part of the London Handel festival, together with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the NYCC performed Handel’s Four Coronation Songs, interspersed with related works by living composers: Héloïse Werner, Anna Clyne, Ben Nobuto and Roderick Williams. Singing and playing with gusto, the evening went on under the baton of Sofi Jeannin, starting with Handel’s Zadok the Priest.
The contrasts between the new works were exciting. (It was all In Thy Beauty except Clyne, from 2021 onwards, for the first time ever.) Werner’s Rejoice! created five minutes of musical genius and verbal inflections, sounds and syllables uniting in recognizable words: all, people, rejoice. Nobuto’s Face Song! An example of such a dance was energy, punchy and effective. Williams’s Exceeding Glad!, which grew out of the singer-songwriter’s involvement with King Charles’s coronation last year, is full of joy, including hand claps, finger clicks and a vivid sense of bells being plucked. .
Starting with a tribute to Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös, who died last month, the London Symphony Orchestra opened his latest LSO Futures/Panufnik Composers Scheme concert with Eötvös’ own Per Luciano Berio: short, beautiful, atmospheric, new to the UK. With no space here to say more, I can only urge you to check out the latest featured composers, each conducted with clarity and compassion by François-Xavier Roth. They are: Christian Drew, Donghoon Shin and Stef Conner.
From watery, reverb-heavy doo-wop (I’m quoting), to a virtuoso cello solo (the LSO’s Rebecca Gilliver) traveling through an aurally stunning nightscape, to a wild bullet of sound, brutal yet harmoniously radiant, inspired by metal death This is a feast for exploring ears. The concert ended with a dazzle in the form of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. How the second violins launched into the fugal finale at such lightning speed without, I swear, moving their bows is still an enigma.
Star ratings (out of five)
Carmen ★★★
National Youth Chamber Choir/OAE/Jeannin ★★★★
London/Roth Symphony Orchestra ★★★★★
• Carmen at the Royal Opera House, London, until May 31, with a live cinema rerun on May 1 at 6.45pm and performances from May 5, 2pm
