Nicole Car / Anmeldelser

The Paris Opera presented a revival of their own production, directed by Ivo van Hove, which, along with set designs and lighting by Jan Versweyveld, costumes by An D’huys and projections by Christopher Ash, have created a powerful and meaningful adaptation of the famous myth of Don Juan. The production’s use of its theatrical resources is so well-balanced that every scene is a surprise and a thrill to see: something very uncommon in modern performances, where stage effects are often overused, making productions repetitive and tedious. The sets were three concrete buildings with numerous doors, windows and stairs. The buildings were in a constant state of movement throughout the entire first act, but the movement was so slow that it could not be perceived: one only realized that the perspective of the stairs and walls had changed after a while. The effect was subtle but left a terrific impression. In Act two the audience, having grown accustomed to this aspect of the set, received a shock when the Commendatore appeared and the buildings suddenly turned around with great speed, creating a claustrophobic, enclosed space that represented the imprisonment of Don Giovanni. There are projections, used only in this scene, depicting thousands of persons moving. The images enlarge as the scene progresses, to finally show a group of people in the mud moving against each other. The effect was electrifying. Sets and costumes are in grey and light brown, reflecting the moral decay of the protagonist. The buildings appear with curtains, flowers, hanging clothes and plants bursting from their balconies, turning these monolithic concrete abstractions into a naturalistic environment. The concept works fantastically and the effect of the lighting on the constantly moving and changing sets creates a sense of infinite possibilities. Van Hove opted for a naturalistic acting approach, making the several comical moments of the opera believable, as well as Don Giovanni’s final fight to save his soul from damnation. French conductor Bertrand de Billy opted for a fast and frenzied tempi. The agile tempo of the Andante in the Overture marked the rhythm of the whole opera; he was precise with the dynamics and rallentando but always sustained a rapid tempo. This was in accordance with this opera as a whole: a performance Mozart classified as “dramma giocoso”—that is, a “comic play,” as “drama” did not have the sense of tragedy that it would later attain. The overture, the final scene of Act one and Don Giovanni’s dinner in Act two were full of energy. De Billy knew he also had to obtain all the dramatism that the Paris Opera Orchestra could provide, in scenes like the beginning of the Overture, the killing of the Commendatore or the confrontation between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore—and this he executed perfectly. De Billy presented the Vienna version of the opera, which contains a single aria for Don Ottavio—”Dalla sua pace”—an extra buffo duet for Leoporello and Zerlina, and a new recitative for Donna Elvira before her second act aria “Mi tradi quellálma ingrata.” But instead of ending the opera with Don Giovanni descending into hell, de Billy maintained the buffo and moralistic ending of the Prague version with a final ensemble. The Paris Opera orchestra shone in the pit and the choir accomplished its brief appearances with excellence. Overall, it was a splendid, dramatic production with a great cast of singers where the female voices outshone their male colleagues.

In the title role, Elena Maximova disappointed. She has the looks and moves for the part, power to burn and the right sort of dark colour in the voice. But a thick accent was allied to awful diction, with hardly a consonant intelligible all evening. I spent the evening struggling to work out the words from a combination of memory and back-translation of the surtitles, and that kills any possibility of being swept away by siren-like sexuality, which is required to make the whole opera plausible. Just like the singing, the orchestral performance was mixed. Bertrand de Billy kept things moving nicely and strings and woodwind gave good, precise performances: the prelude to Act III, when they’re playing on their own, was the orchestral highlight of the evening. But there were simply too many errors and hesitancies in brass and percussion: this is a score where anything less than immaculate timing of triangle or tambourine notes can throw the whole flow of the music. The result was an orchestral performance that was adequate without ever touching greatness. Zambello’s staging is appealing: her take on 19th century Seville is well lit and bustling, very much one’s ideal of a Hispanic city in the burning sun gathered from Zorro movies or elsewhere. But it gives a lot of rope on which a revival director can hang himself: there is a huge amount of movement on stage and it all needs to be executed crisply. Under the revival direction of Duncan Macfarland and choreography of Sirena Tocco, last night’s cast and chorus were good enough to execute it all correctly, but not good enough to give the sense of doing so with abandon. The defining example was extras abseiling down the walls, who landed with care rather than with a thump and a flourish; the exception was the Royal Opera Youth Company, with the children throwing themselves into the action with delightful abandon and brio. For anyone seeing Carmen for the first time, this production will have been a more than satisfactory evening. Old hands hoping to see something extra will find it in Hymel and Car, but not elsewhere.

Kasper Holten has evidently made changes to the production since its first run, but the basic premise remains the same. Holten seems fascinated by the idea of memory, and the two parts of the opera (the first five scenes up to and including the duel, and the final two scenes which take place some time later) are stitched together by having the older Tatyana and Onegin appear during the opera's prelude. Holten then tries to play the whole opera as a memory, using two dancers (Emily Ranford and Tom Shale-Coates) as the young Tatyana and young Onegin.During the dance at Madame Larina's it became clear that the production was moving between the real and some sort of memory space. There were moments when the lighting made the fixed set (a series of openings which could function as doors, shuttered windows or curtained of areas) look shabby and down at heel and the playing area acquired the detritus of memory, the sheaf from the peasants dance in the first scene, Tatyana's books, and this continued so we had a broken chair from the fight at Madame Larina's, the blasted tree from the duel scene and ultimately the prone body of Lensky as Michael Fabiano lay motionless throughout the two final scenes.The young Australian singer Nicole Car came close to my idea Tatyana. She sang with bright flexibility, with an underlying strength and firmness. She seemed to flit effortlessly between the young and older Tatyanas and was that rare species of singer who is able to incarnate both of them. In the first scenes, as young Tatyana, she really did look and sound young, yet in the letter scene produced a superb sense of maturity and depth to her performance. Much of the letter scene was sung directly to the audience and was searingly intense whilst remaining musical. Car has the potential to be a finely poised older Tatyana but in this production she cracks in the last scene and goes to pieces as much as Onegin.Dmitri Hvorostovsky, whom I understand to be still under treatment for his brain tumour. showed no sign of the illness and sang with his familiar dark, firm tones. For the opening scenes he was quite restrained, and not perhaps as darkly sexy as some, but brought in very much the fact that Onegin is a dandy. You sense that Hvorostovsky knows his Pushkin. This combination of hauteur and dandyism made his put-down of Tatyana all the more devastating. The climax in the final scenes, as Onegin goes to pieces, was very well done, but lacked the shock element as we had already seen the older Onegin throughout the opera. The duet with Michael Fabiano's Lensky was profoundly moving, Holten's concept for once moving in tandem with the music and reinforcing the message.The smaller roles were all strongly cast. Jean-Paul Fouchecourt was almost luxury casting as Monsieur Triquet, whilst Elliot Goldie, David Shipley, James Platt and Luke Price provided strong support as a peasant singer, a captain, Zaretsky and Guillot. In the pit Semyon Bychkov gave use everything we wanted and more. This was a lyrically passionate account of the score which still flowed beautifully and where the passion never made the music feel overblown or driven. Rarely have a heard a performance of Eugene Onegin which sounded so right. I can understand some of the thinking behind Kasper Holten's production, but ultimately I found the closing scenes to be robbed of power by his almost over analytical approach. Thankfully the musical account of the score gave us the passion and lyrical beauty lacking in the production.

Bliss deftly wielded his silky tenor through Ferrando’s more touching scenes; faced with Fiordiligi’s initial refusal and Dorabella’s unfaithfulness, his cavatina “Tradito, schernito,” rang with a fine, crestfallen timbre. This seeming defeat tinged his later duet with Car, “Fra gli amplessi,” with a desperate passion that was hard to resist, as heard from the beckoning caress he placed on the phrase “In me alone you’ll find husband, lover, and more if you wish.”