Carmen at ROH: Performance, Playfulness and (Girl) Power

Barrie Kosky’s Carmen, performed at the Royal Opera House in February-March 2018, and starring Anna Goryachova (Carmen) and Francesco Meli (Don José), undoubtedly presents a version of this much-loved and much-performed opera that is fresh and vibrant, if controversial. Kosky, for the most part, shuns any faux-Spanish kitsch, instead turning to, in his words, the Buenos Aires and Berlin of the early twentieth century, with a handful of macho toreadors thrown in for good measure. The ensuing performance is engaging and attention-grabbing; the chorus, who take responsibility for portraying most of these Argentinian/German influences, is replete with mimes and quasi-drag make-up. The bold, almost over-emphasised dances of the chorus members, such as in the show-stopping Chanson Bohème, or the Act III Entr’acte accompanied here by an Argentine tango danced by two men, set the overall tone of this production. Here, Carmen is performative, in the sense that its characters, or at least the majority of them, are aware that they are being keenly watched, and they seize every opportunity to show off, and to entertain.

It makes no sense to talk of Carmen without considering Carmen herself, and it is arguably the opera’s heroine who is the keenest, most daring performer. From the beginning, it is clear that Carmen is aware that she is part of a performance; in a sense, she seems at times to lie outside of the confines of the opera, to possess a space greater than her role can really allow her, playing with the boundaries and the idea of performance in a way that her counterparts do not. For example, the flow of the Prelude is interrupted by the first appearance of the narrator, this production’s substitution for the dialogue or sung recitative usually heard in Carmen. Carmen appears on stage in a flashy, hot pink toreador’s costume, while the (female) narrator outlines, in great detail, the ‘30 features a woman must have in order to be beautiful’. While it’s unclear, both here and throughout the performance, whether we are supposed to view Carmen as the narrator, what is apparent here is that Carmen is the focus of this opera. She slides seductively down the stairs that dominate Kosky’s production throughout while the narrator details almost every feature of a woman’s body, thus emphasising Carmen’s sexual appeal to her male (and, at some points in this production, female) admirers.

When the Prelude music returns, sounding the ominous ‘fate’ motive that comes to be associated with Carmen, she can be found standing at the top of the stairs, watching us. She remains there for the opening of Act I, where the chorus sings of the ‘funny people’ they are watching. But the only people they are looking at is us, the spectators, while the all-powerful Carmen surveys the opera house. Here, we get the impression that Carmen is more than just a character in this opera: she seems well aware of the spectacle taking place, and of her power within this production.

Kosky maintains this impression of Carmen throughout Act I: her famous Habanera is sung while wearing, of all things, a gorilla suit, which is then removed to reveal a suit, presenting a rather androgynous Carmen for all to fall in love with. The chorus seems to worship her, fawning over her to the extent that this ritual begins to almost fetishize her. However, as the opera progresses, Carmen seems to become more emotionally involved, deciding to play around less with her power. While the Chanson Bohème and Carmen’s scenes with her fellow smugglers remain decidedly light-hearted and flashy, her interactions with Meli's Don José and Kostas Smoriginas' Escamillo, as well as her more isolated moments such as the card scene, are more serious and emotionally engaged. Although at times I felt the production had lost something by moving away from the gaudy visuals offered by Act I, this switch to a more serious tone does mirror the growing dangers faced by Carmen, while also allowing for a fairly heartfelt portrayal of her relationship with Escamillo. While it begins as flirtatious fun, the love duet between the pair at the start of Act IV is free of any light-hearted banter, with a seemingly-sincere show of love and commitment by the two characters.

This increasing seriousness of the production culminates, as it has to, with the fatal confrontation between Carmen and Don José outside the bullring. Don José is, by this point, a desperate man, determined to bring Carmen under his control using any means necessary. Her death is, unsurprisingly, one of the most serious scenes in the production: Don José’s slaughter of Carmen is fairly ruthless, outlining the abusive behaviour at the heart of his interactions with Carmen, and ensuring that the audience can feel no sympathy for him.

 At the very end, however, Kosky reintroduces the playfulness present in Act I: Carmen’s dead body remains on the stage throughout the closing music, but as the curtain falls, Carmen rises, shrugging her shoulders. Now, Carmen, has clearly just been stabbed by Don José; there is no question in my mind that Don José does indeed kill her at the end of the opera. However, perhaps as, at the beginning, Carmen seems to exist outside of the operatic spectacle, the same is true here, at the end. By effectively shrugging off her death, discounting it as something fairly irrelevant, Kosky’s vision of Carmen is allowed to survive beyond the confines of the opera.

This Carmen, then, can be seen as the embodiment of the powerful, playful, and independent Carmen than many of us know and love. While, ordinarily, Carmen can be seen to be punished for her sheer wilfulness and joie de vivre, meeting her violent end at the hands of Don José, here she perhaps escapes his control, and indeed the control of the opera as a whole, emerging victorious at the end. Indeed, Kosky’s Carmen is about Carmen; Don José is weak and feeble, seeming a little bland even in his often show-stopping ‘Flower Song’, and Escamillo, while portrayed at times as Carmen’s true love, can hardly be seen to match her appeal in the eyes of the audience. Kosky’s Carmen manages to not only woo those that share the stage with her, but everyone who enters the opera house. This is the Carmen that has surely made this one of the most popular operas in the world: Carmen, the proto-feminist free spirit, the heroine that many of us have been looking for.


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