Georges Bizet’s Carmen was deemed a failure by the critics at its première at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1871. Three months later, Bizet, depressed, suffered a fatal heart attack, not knowing he had created one of the most popular operas in the world. He was just 36 years old.
Carmen lovers looking forward to a lurid crime passionel may be disappointed. Director Andreas Homoki didn’t want to stage anything traditional or realistic. He wanted to do something new. He directed Carmen at the Opéra Comique and now recreates that production in Zürich.
Saimur Pirgu walks on in casual clothes and picks up the score off the floor; and, as he does so, the ghosts of the leading characters in the opera are resurrected. Pirgu is dressed in uniform by them and becomes Don José, the naïve corporal, who is humiliated by a volatile sexy gypsy and becomes a laughingstock.
The set is an empty stage. A beautiful red and gold theatre curtain constantly closes and opens to divide up the opera into little scenes, which are acted in front of the curtain. Homoki never lets the audience forget they are watching a show. Even the chorus, when they are not in character, fighting amongst themselves, causing chaos, become spectators.
The urgent overture, as always, immediately excites the audience and gets the opera off to an exhilarating presto and fateful start. Bizet’s musical fluctuations inspire Homoki to direct the four acts in different styles and periods, constantly updating the action. Carmen’s seduction of José, leading to her escape from prison, is played for musical comedy. The smugglers quintet is staged as if it were a revue number in cabaret. Gianandrea Noseda conducts.
There is a large chorus. The women look like prostitutes in a brothel rather than workers in a tobacco factory. The men in their fin de siècle suits look like their louche clientele. The ragged children could be auditioning Lionel Bart’s Oliver!,
Act 3 does not take place in a picturesque Spanish countryside. There is a pile of rubbish which would do very nicely as a set for Samuel Beckett’s 35-second revue sketch, Breath.
It’s a big surprise to see Carmen sing her first and most famous aria whilst sitting on a chair without any sexy movement. Marina Viotti’s Carmen is nothing like the coarse, sultry, jealous gypsy we have seen in myriad productions and for whom sex is the be all and end all. As the opera progresses, Viotti looks more and more like a member of the French Resistance during World War 2.
Another surprise is there is no toreador. A raucous crowd, as excitable as any football fans, watch the parade on a tiny television set whose screen is not visible to the audience.
Łukasz Goliński, dull, too old and totally lacking in charisma, is miscast as Escamillo, the star toreador, who also loves Carmen. Natalia Tanasii is far more real and convincing as Micaëla, who loves José. She appears, at one point, dressed as a military nurse. Tanasii sings her arias beautifully.
The great final scene is excellently acted and sung by Pirgu, who comes into his own when José refuses to leave Carmen and pleads with her to stay with him. Bizet’s librettists changed Prosper Merimée’s 1845 novel’s ending, ratcheting up the drama considerably by having Escamillo killing a bull in the bullring offstage at the same time as José is stabbing Carmen to death on stage.
Opernhaus Zűrich’s Carmen can be watched free on the OperaVision channel.