Big Fat Gypsy Opera

Opera Review CARMEN at London Coliseum



If you saw the header ‘Opera Review’ and thought ‘not for me’, stick with us for a moment. We’ve always thought Carmen was the crossover vehicle for people who don’t think they like opera: it has lots of recognisable songs, an easy-to-follow story and it’s a landmark piece of social propaganda since, although written in 1875 and set in testosterone-crazed Andalucia, it’s the central female character who dominates the macho men and makes all the decisions on which the plot pivots.

She’s a shoeless and footloose gypsy girl for whom the rules of attraction operate in reverse: come on to her and she’ll reject you, ignore her and she’s all over you like prickly heat on the Costa del Sol. She charms innocent soldier Don Jose into desertion and crime to earn her affection, but when she dumps him for a more glamorous bullfighter, he kills her in a fit of jealous rage.

Traditionally, Carmen is staged with a skipload of fringed shawls, lace mantillas, fans and roses in the teeth and we were excited to hear that ‘bad boy’ Catalan director Calixto Bielto had decided to ditch these clichés in favour of an update to the last days of General Franco, which well suits the lawlessness of Carmen’s gypsy band here seen as cross-border smugglers of alcohol, tobacco and white goods. Hints at organised crime and child prostitution give it a darker tinge, too.

The crowd control (cast of over 60) and staging are truly impressive, the military brutalism highlighted from the outset with a muscular squaddie in Y-fronts and boots pounding punishment laps, but we were slightly less captivated by the leads. On paper, mezzo Ruxandra Donose ought to be the ideal gypsy with her natural dark hair and Romanian colouring, but here she’s a rather forced blonde. She’s also pushing fifty which made her sexual machinations seem more calculating, and in the song where she and her mates tell fortunes with cards, heightened the tension of ‘who will I marry, and when’ so we warmed to the idea that this predatory feline is more cougar than panther.

Up-and-coming American tenor Adam Diegel also felt a bit underpowered as Don Jose but Carmen’s two sidekicks, played by Rhian Lois and Madeleine Shaw, were straight out of ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ and delivered both strong characterisation and vocal energy. Star turn of the night, though, is undoubted Coliseum favourite Elizabeth Llewellyn, the glorious British Jamaican soprano whose superbly-sung Micaela, Jose’s childhood sweetheart from his home village, was transformational – upgrading her from timid peasant girl to another self-determining woman.  Llewellyn’s brilliance made you wish, for a moment, that sopranos could play Carmen.

The orchestra is tremendous, with sensitive, well-paced conducting by Ryan Wigglesworth, and hopefully this amazing staging will be in ENO’s repertoire for many years to come.


written for Londonist and published 22 November 2012

Old 'Flute', Young Cast

The Magic Flute – English National Opera, London Coliseum

Music: Mozart

Text: Emanuel Schikaneder

Original director: Nicholas Hytner, revival directors James Bonas and Ian Rutherford

Reviewer: JohnnyFox

The Public Reviews Rating: 

The warehouse in which English National Opera parks its costumes and sets between performances must be the size of Yorkshire. This production of The Magic Flute was first directed and designed a quarter of a century ago – and they’re about to revive the Jonathan Miller Mikado which is a similar 1987 vintage. So with two or three hundred costumes per production, fifteen or so productions a year, 25 years … well, that’s an awful lot of codpieces and bustles to pile up. They must have ‘Febreze’ delivered by tanker.

That the statistics and logistics of set and costume storage were considered may give you a clue to the fact attention wandered slightly during the three hours and change of this revival of the “iconic“ Nicholas Hytner production. When a theatre calls something “classic” or “iconic” it’s often a euphemism for “outdated”. It isn’t quite outdated here, but there is a patina on this production which could do with a wipe down with a fresh directorial cloth and whilst the singing is mostly fine, revival directors Ian Rutherford and James Bonas could draw out some more life into the acting which is mostly not fine.

It was Mozart’s last great work, written in 1791 the year of his death and featured his best-mate Benedikt Schack as the princely hero Tamino and his sister-in-law as the Queen of the Night who has one of the best showing-off arias in the whole genre, and Mozart’s own affection for the piece and the performers seems to generate an added warmth in the melodic score.

We start with the princely hero being throttled by a risibly plastic snake, and rescued from it by the Queen of the Night’s attendants, a trio of ladies in bright blue Marge Simpson wigs but vocally beautiful, theirs is one of the best contributions – as is that of their boss, the Queen herself played with melodramatic movement but musical perfection by twentysomething American soprano Kathryn Lewek . Unlike many interpreters of the role, Lewek holds nothing back in the first act aria, but still surprised and delighted in the showpiece ‘Hell’s vengeance boils in my heart” in Act 2.

Tamino, and his commoner sidekick Papageno share twin quests for the woman each will love, steered and in some cases steered off course by the Queen and by her rival Sarastro, high priest of some Masonic temple through whose rituals Tamino and Papageno must prove themselves worthy. It’s nonsensical, of course, and only a fairy story on which Mozart chose to hang the music, but this production plays to the pantomime elements, perhaps too closely in one instance because after a couple of scenes of joking, Duncan Rock’s Aussie Papageno tries to commit suicide because there’s no woman in his life, not even in the audience. Just as he puts the noose round his neck, a female voice in the stalls called out ‘Oh, okay then’ and almost threw him.

It’s usual, particularly at ENO, for working class characters to be given English regional accents – Papageno has often been heard as a Geordie – but Rock revels in his native Australian, and whilst it’s intermittently funny, it’s a bit unbalancing as is Rhian Lois’ insistently Welsh Papagena and Shawn Mathey’s boat-bobbingly mid-Atlantic Tamino.

The solid Egyptian stature of the Bob Crowley sets and the richness of the music conflict with the pantomimic recitative and this may be a less-than-satisfying final outing for what has been a mainstay of the ENO for almost the lifetime of much of the young cast.

written for www.thepublicreviews.com and published 14 September 2012.

Shaw-fired Success

PUBLICATION DATE 10 OCTOBER 2011
Written for londonist.com




The first surprise in Fiona Shaw’s off-piste production is the all-white revolving maze of a set, peopled by such a troupe of bowing and scraping servantry – alternately linen-folding, bread-baking and boot-polishing – that we could have landed at Downton Abbey. Instead we’re pleasingly detached from time and place in a bravura attempt to modernize the ‘impossible to update’ Marriage of Figaro.

Purists found it distracting, but we suspect most Londonistas would love it as much as the cheeky, punchy libretto by Jeremy Sams. Shaw’s feminist influence tilts the scale heavily in favour of the women characters with Susannah more calculatedly manipulative than typical operatic maids, Barbarina chucking her guts up after bingeing on alcopops, and the Countess packing her Louis Vuittons to leave Almaviva.

John McMurray, ENO’s head of casting, came onstage to announce a substitute Countess in Elizabeth Llewellyn – the British Jamaican soprano who was such a thrilling Mimi in last season’s La Bohème. He should really have taken a bow for not only is she superb, calm and centred whilst the madder characters caper around her, the rest of the principals are outstanding without being household names. Iain Paterson is a robust and barely deferential Figaro while resisting the stentorian overtones of a Bryn Terfel or Thomas Allen, and musically quite brilliantly-matched with Roland Wood’s rather approachable middle-class Almaviva.

The production bowls along till the interval, after which the fourth act could be an anticlimax were it not for the fine renditions of each of the solo arias carrying the evening splendidly to a climax.

This has to be ENO’s ‘genius’ season because it includes so many delicious and brave choices in its repertoire: from Nico Muhly’s edgy exploration of internet sexuality in Two Boys and the harrowing but enthralling rediscovery The Passenger centred in Auschwitz, to a chocolate box of delights in the colourful Elixir of Love and now courting controversy by daring to deconstruct such a traditional and beloved warhorse as Figaro. With standby tickets from £10, this is a London institution to be proud of, and to support. Go.