When Clark Kent sings like Superman… (of the Carmen in Zurich, the recipe to unspoiled enjoyment of a performance and the wonderful Jonas Kaufmann)
I must have some weird attention disorder or be unusually slow but I just realised that I need to see a new production at least twice to be able to take in all the details. It could also be because I am used to seeing over more than 20 years the same production of an opera, such as Carmen. You don’t exactly get bored with it, even if you have seen the opera more times than many singers have sung it ;-) But the visual impact becomes totally secondary and you focus solely on the music, or on the odd little changes that might happen because a new singer takes on the role. And if these productions are also everything but modern or challenging or adventurous then you yourself as a spectator of operas are in danger of becoming very one-dimensional yourself! My neurons are lately getting a kick out of a kind sensory overload due to new productions and I must say I have found a totally new excitement in going to the opera! Not that I have ever lost or saw in any way tarnished what drew me there in the first place as a little kid, the love and fascination for the music ;-) But having the visual and emotional impact of a show become equally important is an exciting thing (which can lead to one bawling her eyes out at the most unexpected moments, even after 20 years!)
But on to this Carmen ;-) So, I saw it twice and lucky me for doing so. My opinion of it changed quite a bit from one take to another and I also had an almost perfect combination of performances: one from the back of the stalls and the other in the first rows. Different conductors, with one being slightly more musically accomplished and the other being the better show. The double whammy had a very positive final result and I can say that I liked this Carmen more than I ever expected to! My different experiences were due to the show itself, my own doing, but also my environment. When you are trying to take in a performance with all your senses nothing is more annoying that distractions from your neighbours! You nice ladies out there, leave your husbands alone and don’t drag them forcefully from some football game to the opera! You might be happy to have gotten your way, but I will have the most violent thoughts in a while towards them!!! Especially if they ruin the most sensitive and tender bits of an opera by chewing endlessly on some candy, clapping and unclasping their reading glasses, flicking through the program in the dark or crunching up empty candy boxes! I just wished Jose would jump off stage and kill my neighbour in the first Carmen, rather than the woman herself! In the second one I had a coughing-giggling couple next to me, but somehow they were more bearable (he giggled all the time...well, at least somebody found Carmen funny! And she got the cough fits every 30 min) While all this was going on I was trying to absorb this Carmen, which I knew some things about, probably more than I should have. I really should stop myself from reading all 30 reviews before seeing a show! Or looking at any pictures. It never helps in terms of a better experience, quite the contrary. You end up puzzled why things don’t happen as you assumed they would and take longer to overcome the shock of unexpected developments, because critics will never tell you the juicy bits, they are always just about the transcendental significance of some object that is or misses from the stage or about vibratos, fiatos, portamentos and other foreign score-dissecting words. So take my advice, go as virgin as possible to a performance in terms of directing and reviews, but do find out what’s it about because otherwise you might not understand a damn thing! If you haven’t heard it before, do listen if you have time to some stuff (at least you find out in advance if you need to take a pillow with you for a more comfortable nap!) but stop yourself from listening to more than 5 versions and definitely don’t expect to hear any of these on stage. Remember, most of the singers who you have heard on CD are now old and grey, can’t sing a tune, would only make a good granny or granddad than a decent lover or are in heaven ( or hell, depending). And even though they wrote the notes, the composers have not left us with exact instructions as to the hair style and eye color, weight, height, tone of voice and correct or stylish length of high or low notes. So pretty much everything goes, as long as it follows the score and nothing nor anybody will ever be perfect. What you might adore, others will surely hate! So if you really want to have fun, just listen and watch, don’t compare; it really is about the here and now!
Luckily this Carmen, although modern, did not try to confuse the viewers too much. The action and intrigue is still fully recognisable, moreover, the whole story is stripped back to the bare essential. The stage is filled out by an inclined round disc, which is very nice visually because you always see everything from a perfect angle, but which from some fairly unnatural movements of some of the singers you could tell also presents serious balance challenges for smaller persons. And I suspect this inclination together with the high heals pushed Veselina into a continuous strained pose, which I will come back to a bit later.
The stage stays pretty empty all the way through which for a stage of small dimensions as Zurich is, is not a bad choice. We have in the first act an umbrella and a plastic chair which is Jose’s personal space, a door to the cigarette factory and nothing else. In the second act chairs, tables which are quickly stacked up and a TV set which shows a football game first and scenes from a corida later during Jose and Carmen’s interaction (very suggestive ;-)).In the third act we have make believe mountains of Lilliput size at the edge of the disc against a huge image of the moon at night and various smuggled merchandise on stage. In the third act…we have a tree, a big, very life like laurel tree! The bareness focuses all the attention on the main characters, who have to either deliver excellent performance or the show will go down with them very quickly, because there is nothing else to focus on or to look at. Under such circumstances excellent singing and acting becomes an experience to be savoured word for word… but it will also make any faults to take on significant proportions.Luckily , with some small exceptions the first was the case here ;-)
Act 1 – enter Clark Kent
This act is usually all about Carmen and who she is, but in this production it definitely was about Jose as his character was dissected up to the last detail. The act starts with the chorus of policemen here /soldiers otherwise engaging the public by watching into the house and pointing fingers at us as if we were the ones they watch walking down the street. Surprising, but funny as you would otherwise normally barely make eye contact with anyone on stage and here it was intentional. Michaela stops by and they leave her in her undies! Well 50’s undies which would nowerdays pass as a white summer dress ;-) But it becomes all clear what this bunch of policemen is all about.
Then the children chorus, excellently sung and played, a joy to watch and I am glad that while they did so they had the stage to themselves.
Among all this boisterous activity enter Don Jose, or is it him? Tall, lanky, clumsy, with evasive eyes hidden behind the most hideous glasses ever known to man. He salutes his superior and in his haste drops a whole stack of newspapers and his boss' magazines. With a mixture of disgust and fear he picks up his boss' glossy pages only to unfold them by mistake showing off some revealing pictures. Horrified, he pushes the glossy in his boss' hands and carefully gathers his own reading material ;-) He is carrying a big canvas bag (very unmanly that object indeed!) and wearing a perfecty buttoned up uniform (while his colleagues seem to be running around in short sleeves) He sets up camp next to a big umbrella on an uncomfortable looking plastic chair, takes off his cap and carefully places it next to the chair, to reveal perfectly gelled back hair with an equally perfect parting line. He carefully attaches a small ventilator to the umbrella, then proceeds to sit down, weary of crinkling his pants and not before taking his jacket off and putting it on the back of the chair. He is wearing a long sleeved, equally buttoned up shirt with a dark tie. He then proceeds to take things out of the canvas bag: a lunchbox and a fruit juice (the rest of the bunch had been drinking beer just moments ago). He places a napkin on his lap and vigorously munches on a sandwich and elegantly sips from the juice bottle. Then he carefully eliminates any remaining bread crumbs from his pants,places everything back in the lunch box and the box in the bag and gets out some newspapers. He straightens these, digs up a pen, crosses one leg over the other and arranges his pant line so as not to crinkle and becomes totally engrossed in solving some crosswords in the newspaper. Oh, and by the way this is Jonas Kaufmann!!!!!!
And now you may laugh as much as you like, the audience certainly did and I had the hardest time ever no to! Useless to say this whole detailed routine of unveiling Clark Kent/alias Jose, the mama’s boy took quite a while and was so thoroughly fascinating that I completely missed the exit from the cigarette factory of the workers and Carmen’s entrance the first time I saw it! It is of course intentionally in such a big contrast to all the activity around him and shows us just how deep under in his little controlled world this man is. If he didn’t look up at some point from his newspaper to wrinkle his nose, fan his hands to disperse the cigarette smoke and point his ventilator at the workers you wouldn’t even notice they are there ;-) needless to say this was an Oscar worthy performance if I have ever seen once! JK as the perfect and perfectly credible mama’s boy, I had to live to see that with my own eyes or else I would have never believed it! And he had hardly sung a note yet…other than to describe the workers for his boss as some women, “tres legere!” Never even noticed this phrase before but he did put all his disdain into it and it sounded marvellously rounded and heavy…you could practically see the clothes drop of those women in this sole word ;-)
So yes, this Clark Kent stole the show but there is nothing wrong with that! The murder at the end of this opera is by no means the normal ending to a relationship, however passionate, so there must be a trigger somewhere in the two main characters, they must be shown to be worlds apart, worlds so far apart and so conflicting that they clash with destructive consequences. So this is an unusual but credible version of Jose. And the picture and his character weaknesses become complete once Michaela comes into the picture. He embraces her like a beloved sister until he notices her state of undress, from which point on he jumps away totally intimidated and never looks her again in the eye until she is fully dressed again. His sole preoccupation is with his mother’s memory and her letter. He is the vivid picture of the son, longing for his mother and his tranquil village back home. So much so that when Michaela offers the kiss he bends sideways to offer his cheek and shies away even more when she forcefully twists his head to deliver the kiss on his lips. None of the usual playfulness around the kiss can be found here and once the letter is opened, he never even notices Michaela leave.
The interaction with Carmen happens totally at her initiative. Rewind back to the plastic chair where he solves his puzzle. She sings her alluring song but he never eve lifts his eyes from the paper; intrigued, she gets closer and closer and sings around the chair until he notices and when she addresses him, stammers something about making a chain for his weapon, chain which promptly drops out of his mouth as he gaps at this strange creature. She drops the flower on him and he picks it up as it were some dirty or hot thing, hastily putting it away in his pocket, completely flustered by her talks of enchanted flowers and the unwanted attention in general. All this while all the other singers on stage watch them which highlights even more his awkwardness in light of all this attention.
A few moments later when he drags her off from the fight in the factory he seems full of righteousness in dealing with her, but as soon as he is asked to touch her in order to tie her hands, his hands start trembling and you see he’d rather run away. He asks her to not speak to him and tries to be hard but weekly fails to do so when se strats singing by slowly leaning on his back and he is totally torn between walking away but is somehow spellbound next to this women. The contact has bewitched and confused him and when she steps away playfully tying his wrists together he twist neck, upper body and head to get closer to her. Easy prey this one and his weakness is played and sung out in full by JK, his tone and his attitude is enchanted, imploring, spellbound, totally attracted by the unknown.
Carmen in the meantime never comes off as a real enchantress, she is harsh and comes off as cold and quite calculating. She is annoyed by his indifference, amused by his awkwardness and his struggle to fight her off. It feels like a cat and mouse game, more than a seduction game. He is seduced more by the unknown than by Carmen herself. I am unsure if this was fully the director’s intention or this is the product of Kasarova’s interpretation of Carmen. Her movements are never fluid, never quite gracious or seductive; in the first performance 90% of the time she had adopted a strange pose with her feet apart, firmly planted in the ground, her head up high and her already pointy chin directed to China. She never really looks at Jose, she looks somewhere above the audience, or above his head and all he ever gets from her is an ironical smile. Not once did I ever get the feeling this Carmen even liked Jose, he just seemed the constant subject or her irony. I understand that the director wanted this Carmen to be different, that she is supposed to dislike and be tired of men in general,but this was taken to the extreme with Kasarova. The character became too one-dimensional, even in physical expression. Add to this her desire to create a vocally different Carmen as well, each note and phrase was elaborated, the delivery stylised in a demonstration of absolute control of voice and technique. This would surely be interesting in a concert, but in a live performance it added an extra layer of artificialness to a character already stressed to caricature dimensions. Watching the same pose during an entire opera while hearing soo much vocal twisting that it distorts the music can be tiring and at times boring. And it does the characters no favours as you can’t really bring yourself to feel sorry for her death. The first time around I never believed that Carmen ever cared for Jose, or for Escamillo, I never really felt Carmen, the person, ever was on stage.
2 Act – Flying Buttons
I found it strange that there never are any other women besides Carmen and her two friends in this scene. And it was strange that the singers had to carry the tables and chairs around. At least here it was still believable within the pub context but in the next act this was truly annoying! And don’t even get me started on the dance of the three women! Horribly ridiculous! The link on the Zurich opera house site fully illustrates this (
http://www.opernhaus.ch/d/spielplan/spielplan_detail.php?vorstellID=10322870) …it could be any jungle dance, but Mowgli and Baloo were way way more gracious than these 3. Whoever choreographed this definitely doesn’t deserve any sweets for at least a month! All three are pretty and sweet women and they deserved at least this instance of elegance or gracefulness within the opera and I can’t really forgive the author of this crime for destroying one of my favourite musical parts in this opera! Shudders!
At least the following quintet was musically so alert and fun and well sung and played that it erased the image of the “dance” fast enough! Well done to the two smugglers and Carmen’s friends, they received on both nights very well deserved applause!
And now to the almost happening relationship between Carmen and Jose. Or the only point where their intentions almost meet. Although in this version they are never meant to meet because Carmen never honestly has any emotional intentions towards Jose. But at least physically it is almost happening. This production has some beautiful images, which make the whole thing worth while. One of the best is here. He comes, tie, shirt, shyness and all to declare his love for her and she, amused by his jealously decides to make it up to him by dancing for him. And again instead on focusing solely on Carmen in this scene the attention switches very cleverly on Jose’s reactions to Carmen. She sits him on a chair, centre stage and a spot of light focuses on her moving hand as it circles him until it tousles his hair and finally centres on him, head dropped backwards and she grabs his hand and draws him to her. Beautiful acting from both, splendid lighting and perfect images.
Jose is at her mercy and buttons start flying ;-) Carmen rips his shirt open and buttons actually fly ( he still wears his tie however :-p) and his belt hangs loose and… taratata!!!! ;-) Just in time one might think as he really looks lost!
He quickly buckles up again and tries to leave and by doing so looses any chance he might have had with her. He has one of his temporary fits of character, which make you hope he is morphing into a real man, but alas, as the show goes on you realise it never quite happens. He drags her to a chair where she listens with the most disdainful face ever to one of the most beautiful love songs ever written or sung! If you heard JK sing Jose at ROH forget it, this is a totally different Jose! Sweet, desperate, powerless and almost scared he is a picture of softness and addiction and ends up on his knees hugging her feet in a most touching and frustrating imploration. The voice is divine!!! If only it didn’t come from such a weak character ;-) It is impossible not to feel sorry for this Jose! Well, except if your name is Carmen.
His love once given has become irrelevant and what she wants is freedom, he can join in if he wants to follow. Beautifully heart twisting how while she sings and struts over the stage he drags himself from the feet of the chair on his knees back to her feet where he collapses powerless in this vision of an impossible world she is offering. JK ends up imploring her to stop talking and rolls on his back with his head hanging over the edge of the stage softly whispering while she joins him lying on top. I dare say we were all rendered speechless and not by the sensual suggestion but by the sensual tone of voice coming from his throat in this most impossible of positions!
But since he has some will left he refuses to follow, more fighting, enter his boss, jealousy, an energy burst from Jose and more fighting during which the same Jose ends up with a bottle being broken on his locks ( remember Carmen’s hand had finally tousled those gelled locks ;-)).Verry effective trick which has everyone gasping and Jose rolling of the stage…or almost to the edge of it ( yes, you are right in thinking the director kept JK extremely busy during this performance, no penny of his cache got wasted!). In the mean time enter the smugglers, Jose’s boss gets killed in a very discrete way, as if this were business as usual for these people, and the scene ends with everyone praising freedom while Jose kneels horrified next to the body of his bloody boss.
Well, Carmen might not be thrilled by this Jose but the audience certainly fell in love with his flower song, while still on his knees he had to submit to the overwhelming wave of applause that thundered over him!
3 – the blue moon or was it the blue t-shirt?
One thing I found really distracting is that singers were asked to do the stage arrangements as well, particularly in this act. I love to stay in this invisible bubble of the imaginary world while the performance last and seeing the singers drag carpets along the stage, arrange them into place, carry mountains around and carton rocks does not rock my world! I don’t like to be reminded it is all fake and I think these activities are to be left to professionals who don’t leave kinks in the carpets on a sloped stage where others can slip and end up in a head first fall into the orchestra pit. Ok, it didn’t happen this time around but there was tripping and I much rather would have listed to the music with a drawn curtain than get distracted by the stage carpeting.
What I did like about the scene was the gigantic moon in the background, plain beautiful. And there were more gimmicks to come from Jose! When JK started limping across the stage, then sat down at the edge, took his shoe off and started massaging his foot with expert movements as if this was business as normal I honestly thought, oh noooo, what the hell has he done now?????? I mean forgive me, but given recent history this was a tad too realistic for me in the first instance, he’s just too good at this acting business ;-) Of course when he stood and walked off totally normal I did see the comic side of it and had to stop myself again from laughing out load! JK, you did it, you totally had me there!
I love the card scene but I have to say while Carmen’s friends do an admirable job Carmen never convinces me here, she is neither afraid, nor in any way worried…seems almost as if the cards like everything else bore her .. Pitty really because I adore the fatalism of destiny here when she repeats again and again, toujour la mort! And her dark tone contrasts so well with the joy of the other two about love and money. Bizet had done amazingly well here and this moment was almost entirely lost.
Michaela comes and goes, Isabel Rey is nice but I am sad to say her voice never has the warmth needed for this role to become really convincing. And I wish somebody would explain to me how in the middle of the mountains she finds good ol’ Jose’s canvas bag ( yes, poor fella’ is still carrying it around!), takes a puppet out of it and totally dismembers it voodoo style while singing????? Or while Carmen is still wearing her high heels and apron in the middle of the mountains? Besides why she never deserves a decent dress that doesn’t make her look like a cleaning lady???
Or while Jose is wearing a sleeveless t-shirt in the middle of the mountains?? On second thought, forget the last question! Never mind why, thank god the shirt and tie are gone and helloo there dark blue sleeveless number!!!
Reenter Escamillo! Whom I have unjustly left out of act 2… Petrusi is a wonderful Escamillo, traditional but not in a bad way. This production has enough innovations and distracting details, it is nice to find a familiar constant for a change. Petrusi sings the macho and charming toreador to a T and even manages to down a whole pint of beer in between 2 phrases which earns him laughs and applause. He is back in the mountains this time and his exchange with Jose is fascinating. Escamillo so sure of himself and his chances with Carmen, while the other is an almost broken man who listens while sitting down on a box to the sad short story of his love for Carmen from the lips of her probably next lover. Only when Escamillo suggest the love is already over does he react and draws the knife and they engage in a visually very attractive fight. JK literally flies midair while jumping gracefully from one box to another. There is some knife clicking and some daring moves, well done for both singers! The fight might be longer and more difficult to play than usual but it is enjoyable to watch.
And after our eyes have been spoiled with some pretty clever images ( and let’s not forget the blue shirt!) we are treated to some regal singing! If anyone had doubts that this Clark Kent would ever become Superman none remained after this. Non Carmen, je ne partireeeeee paaaasss!!!! Je te tien fille danne!! Those long phrases, that breath, that voice that kept coming, powered through to every corner of the house and into every ear and heart! One of those instances when you feel you could lift of your seat and start floating around in space! The voice was dripping with force and energy and you could feel its irresistible pull! and one would ask themselves what on earth is Carmen thinking when she sends this Jose away?
I thoroughly enjoyed this very different Carmen and even liked to be forever frustrated by the mama’s boy depicted here, but I would lie if I would say I didn’t equally enjoy this outburst of full on power. After all, he will kill her, so at some point we have to see the force that he can unleash when he lets go of his inner demons. And it is not the decibels I am talking about here, because it is not about volume but about intensity; you have to feel that with every note he ties her emotionally to himself, that he forces her one step closer until she is caged in his passion for her, with no way out. Or so he thinks….oh how chilling his nous reveronnnnn!!! How dangerously dark and scrumptiously menacing!
4 Who killed who?
Chorus of singers and children are set up somehow similar as in the first act but less engaging, maybe because we are all waiting anxiously for the last confrontation. I fail to understand here why Carmen is still wearing the same dress as in the mountains and why Escamillo gives her a big fat diamond ring? Strangely enough, although I never would belive this Carmen would love any man, I love the way Kasarova sings oui je t’aime Escamillo, warm and full of passion! Too bad the character that was constructed for her makes such statements totally unbelievable. And there was really no need for the new bling! She can perfectly throw away Jose’s ring, which we never saw him give to her anyway, just as she has thrown him away emotionally a long while ago. It doesn’t really have to do anything with the new man, she never really cared for him anyway, not in this version anyway. The love and passion was really more in his head than in reality, and when he finally realises that the Carmen he loved never actually existed or ever loved him he kills her.
But until then they do a kind of dance/chase around each other and the tree, which strangely enough gives a beautiful image. Carmen keeps to her cold and remote character and never really engages with him, she never really looks at him. He on the other hand implores in the sweetest voice, in the smallest, most intense pleading whisper to be saved by her.He does say to save her but it rings especially true when he pleads to be saved himself. It is heart wrenching and ear tingling at the same time. With every word you feel the love and the dispear he is equally drowning in. Her harsh tone contrasts beautifully to his tender one. I was amazed by the singing the first time I heard it and was luckily totally touched the second time around. I cannot explain why, but the second time I truly felt the connection in this scene. Probably in part because Kasarova was much more alive the second time around. She seemed to think less and feel more while singing, her character was equally well defined but she became human. The drama was even more intense because suddenly you had two irreconcilable people before you, rather than just a Jose clinging to an imaginary and still statue. The second time around she even looked at him and finally looked appropriately afraid and horrified when stabbed. And I cried all the way through from his first to his final note, from his first imploring step to his last one, where he reaches with trembling hands to his “Carmen adoree”, now dead before him. I can’t describe how touching it was in words, because words alone would not be enough. All I can say is, if you get the chance, go hear and go feel what you hear! When something breaks inside you and vibrates at every note you’ll know!
I missed about this production the recitatives from ROH which gave a more personal dimension to the interaction between Carmen and Jose, but then again, this such as it was would have been maybe less touching had there been more connection between the two, the drama and emotion unfolds here rather from the disconnect.
I thought the tail waggling dog in the first act was one detail to many. If the habanera doesn’t do it for the public on its own, the support from the dog is not gonna work either!
PS A friendly hello to the nice girls at the wardrobe of the opera house who were so utterly fascinated by the magazine with JK on the cover that they had to read it and make copies of it!!! ;-)))) Happy to help out with some entertainment during those long hours and happy to find fans in house :-)
PPS JK = Jonas Kaufmann
