Carmen in Barcelona

Carmen, Gran Teatre del Liceu - Barcelona, September 30 2010

Director ..... Calixto Bieito

Conductor ..... Marc Piollet

Carmen ..... Jossie Pérez

Don José ..... Brandon Jovanovich

Micaela ..... Maria Bayo

Escamillo ..... Jean-François Lapointe

Frasquita ..... Eliana Bayón

Mercédès ..... Itxaro Mentxaka

Le Dancaire ..... Marc Canturri

Le Remendado ..... Francisco Vas

Moralès ..... Alex Sanmarti

Zuñiga ..... Josep Ribot

Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of the Gran Teatre del Liceu

And so I saw that famous Carmen directed by Calixto Bieito that was premiered ~10 years ago and since has been retouched in its several revivals on smaller European stages, including the one in Maastricht where the PR staff posted a very good trailer on YT.

I can only imagine the resistance this production had met at the time when it was created.  From  today's perspective though this show is not controversial but is rather a testimony of a refined theatrical talent of Calixto el Grande. The show is not as complex or provocative as his Aida in Basle, or his Abduction from the Seraglio in Berlin, but it is definitely the best Carmen on the market today.

For once, there is no tobacco factory in Seville and women slapping their thighs to impress the aroused military. Bieito manages to shape the story in such a way that it goes beyond love and passion, even if his Carmen remains portrayed as a strong, independent woman like in many other productions.

The story is situated in South of Spain, close to its border with Morocco. The first Act is placed in the military camp where the discipline is strong. Women and children  who live in the area are poor and depend on the soldiers who in turn help them by giving them food and by keeping the area safe, clean from smugglers, criminals... Once the soldiers have time for themselves (a bell rings!), they are unleashed and behave the way you'd expect the frustrated soldiers to behave in the presence of women.

A dramatic awkwardness of EVERY production of Carmen comes at the key point when Don José is ordered to tie Carmen up, when he feels fatally attracted to her.  That always falls flat, except that in this production it works impeccably: Carmen is aware of her attractiveness and the moment Don José ties her hands she rubs them against his sex (both are facing Zuniga so he cannot see what's happening between the two). Don Jose enjoys the situation for not more than a few seconds and jumps away, but the moment is cleanly defined and discernible from the rest of the action. You may complain that I'm paying too much attention to details, but it's all about the details...

Carmen is a strong woman who wants to go out of poverty and she joins the gang of smugglers lead by Escamillo. Since we are close to the border with Morocco, you can see all kinds of goods they are trafficking (huge boxes of cigarettes, washing machines, plasma TV...) but most importantly they deal with expensive cars. 

One other moment that is usually badly done in other productions of Carmen is when Don José is torn between his love for Carmen and his duty in the military. He does not want to be a deserter as it would demolish his sense of dusty and his pride. For Bieito there is no doubt and the situation becomes perfectly plausible: Carmen takes off her underwear in a sexy way when the calls to go back to barracks start to be heard, and... and Don José stays with her and the gang.


I will not recount the story of Carmen now. I'd only point out three elements that Bieito emphasizes in his show that target issues broader than the fatal love between Carmen and Don José:

(1)  As the action takes place in the south where many people from Africa are trying to cross the border illegally, Gypsies can be viewed as immigrants (illegal or legal). The area around border is nowadays full of desperate people confined in refugee/transit centers waiting to be deported back to the countries they came from. That interpretation was advanced in the press and apparently during the press conferences preceding the premiere.
Even though the drama takes place in Spain, it is perfectly applicable to any Western country.*

(2)  Gypsies can naturally be viewed as Roma people and the story gets a bitter taste as Roma have recently been massively expelled from France to Romania. That's a hot issue in Europe right now... In that sens the story of Carmen and Don José becomes both more actual and gains in its political incorrectness.

(3) Immigrants/Gypsies are coming, they live and work in the host countries, bringing their culture and little by little change the "national identity" of the country they immigrated in. That of course induces nationalism that Bieito denounces very often in his shows [particularly in his Aida in Basle!]
The third act of Carmen, for example, opens with a huge metallic Osborne bull [a symbol of Spain], with a lone soldier who takes all of his cloths off, and starts dancing by mimicking the virile gestures of toreadors. When someone comes on the stage and breaks the silence, he gets scared, quickly picks up his cloths and runs away. I let you conclude how Bieito's challenging the myths of bravery of both military and toreadors.
Calixto goes a step beyond when Gypsies tear down the Osborne bull as it has no symbolic meaningfor them and they see it more reasonable to take the rusty tin structure and sell the pieces as old iron.** There is also an episode with the Spanish flag.

All of the above is made in a masterfully shaped smooth theatrical action, and mostly as collateral ideas that by no mean derail from the main operatic drama. It is not controversial but stimulating: you cannot leave the theater without thinking about one of the above issues, relevant to our life today.

There are 14 shows in this run served by three different casts. I am glad to have come to see the second cast as both Jossie Perez or Brandon Jovanovich sing very seldom in Europe, and as I've read many good things about them, I was glad to listen to them singing live.
Jossie was a bit tentative in Habanera, but then relaxed and sang better and better. Liceu auditorium is large and in spite of its good acoustics you have to push your voice to fill the house. That's maybe the reason why she sounded tired in the last part of the show. She's maybe not in the same league with Anna Caterina Antonacci, or even Elina Garanca and Stéphanie d'Oustrac, but she is nevertheless a very good Carmen.
Brandon is excellent in this role and has nothing to envy to any of the top Don José's of our time. I was particularly impressed by the fact that he kept the same level of intensity throughout the show and finished the performance strongly. His French is perfectly comprehensible, even though he's not completely focused during the dialogs. In the end, I was among those who yelled "Bravo!"  to his performance. I saw later in his sched that he'll be Siegmund/Walküre in the SF Ring. I hope this won't make scars on his voice (in terms of vocal flexibility) as he is not a helden-tenor.
The singing surprise of the night was, however, Maria Bayo. While her Micaëla maybe lacks freshness of Anne-Catherine Gillet, she is 100% invested in the role, sings it with great confidence and with an impressively high volume. Her tessitura is higher than that of Anna Netrebko but in terms of volume she's up there with Trebs.

Jean-François Lapointe is a very good singer and excels when with his musicality when employing the upper register of his voice. In the lower register, however, he was often drowned by the orchestra, despite a very attentive maestro Piollet. I guess Liceu is too big for his gravi.
The orchestra was very good too, with a brass section a bit too heavy at the beginning but  Marc Piollet tamed them fast enough and everything went on very well.


The secondary roles and the chorus were very good too, so that in spite of my fatigue I spent a very good evening at Liceu.

Notice that on October 13 @ 20:00 (cet), this same production of Carmen will be live broadcast from Barcelona to hundreds of cinemas worldwide. The cast for that show will be: Béatrice Uria-Monzon, Roberto Alagna, Marina Poplavskaya, Erwin Schrott... 

For those of you who're in Paris, you can see it at the Balzac cinema - Paris 8é.

Here are several CC pics and more:

Jossie Perez -Carmen

Brandon Jovanovich - Don José

Jean-François Lapointe - Escamillo

Maria Bayo - left

Maestro Marc Piollet

Singers and a LARGE & excellent chorus

Front of Liceu: it is a beautiful and very well maintained theater -- it is rather expensive but very enjoyable

Fun part is that getting out of the theater takes you straight to La Rambla (pedestrian area in the very center of Barcelona)

Intermission: you may either choose to mingle in this fancy decorated hall

or opt for a large modern decorated hall/bar situated underneath the auditorium [where they sell a lousy wine ;) - Mei will kill me for this remark ;) ]

or you can go through a very nice shop with CDs DVDs and souvenirs, and enter a large cafeteria decorated with sketches like this,

or you can go out to La Rambla and enjoy the wonderfully warm weather.

_________________

* In the US the Gypsies would be the Mexican immigrants. Indeed a new production of Carmen in Bordeaux, also premiered last week, plays precisely along that line: the action is placed on the border between the US and Mexico [see here for a short video] 

** There is an even more subtle interpretation that spurs a debate of the Spanish/Catalan relations, which is beyond the scope of this modest review ;)

*** There must be a bunch of typos. Will clean them (at least partly) tomorrow. Sorry for that...