Carmen reviews

The Glyndebourne Carmen seems to have gone over better than I thought it would. Here are a few responses from the press:

The Independent: "This is an evening where Carmen improvises her castanet rhythms on Don José's body. If you don't believe me, start phoning for returns."

The Times: "Too often, these days, Carmens are pale, thin, complicated girls: more at home, one feels, in the Bodleian Library than a Seville fag factory. So it’s fun to find one with the hair of Shirley Bassey, the figure of Barbara Windsor, the strut of Tina Turner and the freneticism of a go-go dancer paid by the wiggle."

The Guardian: "This production, first seen at Glyndebourne in 2002 with Anne Sofie von Otter in the title role, still awaits principals who can make the most of what it has to offer."

Here's my £0.025p on the subject.

Tania Kroll as Carmen? A sizeable, jolly, smiley, girl-next-door type at first view - why do all these men go for her rather than most of the rest of the chorus? Well, she's a terrific actress - that helps. She has a good, musical, intelligent voice with fine diction - unremarkable and no way sensual enough, but she puts other aspects of the character first. She is fabulous - the best one yet in this third-time production - at putting across Carmen the Gypsy: the outsider, the free-thinker, keeping herself slightly to herself at the edge of the proceedings, going her own way no matter what. By the end, she was devastating.

Brandon Jovanovich as Don Jose? Problem: the last one I saw was Kaufmann at Covent Garden. But Jovanovich is as hefty a fellow as this Carmen needs, and comes across as a jolly dangerous bloke with one mighty whopper of a big voice. I know it's dangerous to start talking about eating hats, but this guy should probably be Siegfried. We will certainly be hearing more of him. But could someone please give him some French coaching, PDQ?

Kate Royal as Micaela? That was the one really great performance I mentioned the other day. Some of my colleagues said they found her difficult to warm to - but that's the nature of Micaela, that's why Jose gets seduced by a sexpot, because Micaela is not one. There was a sense of true terror behind her aria in the mist, and she seemed to inhabit character and voice to perfection.

Oh, and Escamillo? Forgot about him. Perhaps they wanted him to come across as a D-list fading celebrity ripe for conscription to the worst of Big Brother or that thing in the jungle, but...

The biggest surprise in the write-ups is the universally positive response to the conducting. Yes, the orchestra sounds good - it always does these days. But Deneve (who looks uncannily like a cross between James Levine and Marge Simpson) takes tempi that are often on the leisurely side and compared to the fizz that Philippe Jourdain brought the original run with von Otter, this version definitely left the best bubbles for the interval champagne. Carmen is a long evening, but if it's well done it doesn't feel it. This one did. Very.

Bravo Taraf

At The Spectator blogs, Clive Davis picks up on the Roby Lakatos video I posted the other day, but also quotes a piece about the Roma in Italy from The Times, which rather typifies the skewed light on minority communities that the media likes to use to gain sales. I was objecting to a lot more than fingerprinting, as the piece we quoted from The Independent made clear. Because the situation is a lot more dangerous than that.

As a follow-up, here is a powerful piece of writing by Romanian author Mircea Cartarescu.

And above, an extract from Tony Gatliff's film Latcho Drom about the Romanian Roma band Taraf de Haidouks (we saw them at the Barbican in June last year). World-music expert Ben Mandelson and I get to be their curtain-raiser at the Cheltenham Music Festival on Saturday week, 19 July, which is an honour.

Mamma Mia!

And if you think the cello story is good, just try this one, from Indy on Sunday - scandalissimo indeed! Puccini will never be the same again...

"It was Puccini's pursuit of women that created the great crisis in his life. This is a tale of infidelity, jealousy, vengeance and despair. It goes a long way towards explaining the composer's fallow period. Its repercussions are still being felt on the lakeside today."

The story of Mrs C...

This adorable story about Piatigorsky comes, rather unexpectedly, from the inimitable Robert Fisk, who devoted his Saturday column in the Indy to certain gems of information provided by his readers.

'...there arrives another letter from Ms Somervil-Ayrton, remembering how I once sat next to the late Mstislav Rostropovich en route to Beirut with what he called his "wife" – his sacred cello – on the seat beside him. Did I know, asks Ms S-A, the airline story about Piatigorsky, "who had the reputation Rostropovich has now"? I fumble for my massive, 2,239-page edition of the Norwegian K B Sandved's The World of Music, a weighty heart attack of a book wherein, on page 1622, I find "Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian-American cellist, born 1903". He began life by playing at his local cinema, but at 14 was engaged by the Imperial Opera in Moscow. At the revolution, smugglers got him out of Russia, leaving him stripped and penniless in Poland but he became first cellist in the Berlin Philharmonic and toured the US in 1929 where Samuel Chotzinoff wrote that in his hands "the cello loses its limitations, his playing is as light and brilliant as if he were playing a violin".

Now back to Ms S-A who writes how Piatigorsky "was shopping around for an airline that would carry his cello free of charge – as he was sick of all the hassle and expense ... he managed to find one – 'Of course, Mr. Piatigorsky – of course' – and went on the appointed day to pick up his tickets. To his surprise, they proudly presented one for himself and one in the name of Miss Cello Piatigorsky. I think he had to pay anyway...".'

Here comes Carmen...

Carmen opens at Glyndebourne today, so here's a taster of the production, a David McVicar classic - gritty, powerful and very real. If you're going this year, you'll see a totally different cast from this, which dates from 2002 and features von Otter as Carmen. I couldn't find any Youtube video of the glorious costumes for the toreador procession in the last act, which were apparently sourced from the real McCoy in Seville, but the whole thing is available on DVD.

Having attended the dress rehearsal, I'm not yet at liberty to give detailed views (why-oh-why didn't I take a pseudonym while I could?!) but let's just say this: there's one really great performance plus a couple of surprises; the dramatic side is fabulous; and at times you may feel the need for caffeine. More about it soon...