Carmen

05/03/2010

Glorious Welsh-Scots romp @ Wales Millennium Centre

Carmen
Wales Millennium Centre
Cardiff Bay
4/5

If Carmen and Madam Butterfly are the world's most popular operas, then Bizet's dramatic Spanish drama with gypsy romps and boisterous tunes might just beat the Japanese romance if it comes down to pure entertainment. Hard working, high-brow aesthetics can take the night off with this glorious co-production between Wales and Scottish National Opera, that more than 120 years after its first performance, is still a work to set toes tapping and fingers drumming.

Reviving their roles as tormentor and tormented are Patricia Bardon and Gwyn Hughes Jones. This Carmencita is a little cracker. Bardon certainly has the voice and her acting and facial expressions reveal a  voluptuous risk taker, not certain she is doing the right thing, but doing it nonetheless. Poor Don Jose, but what can you say? He's a mother worshipping sap who by his age and rank, should have cut the apron strings with his army knife long before now. Easy prey for the señorita but then again, most men would be.

Whether ones path to discovering this three way tale of the femme fatale, the soldier boy and the superstar bull fighter, was Otto Preminger's 1954 film, Carmen Jones, when the toreador Escamillo, is instead a prize fighter, or latterly Matthew Bourne's inspired grease monkey take on the opera's mechanics in Car Man, the source of both is still the pure favourite. Carmen, the cigarette factory tart and lust struck soldier Don Jose are the central figures but they are not the only stars of the show. A paragon of modesty and Don José's future bride (given a different roll of the dice) is Micaёla who is played by Sarah-Jane Davies, with a touch of Julie Andrews, and Carmen's two fag smoking, petticoat hoiking wild eyed gypsy companions Frasquita and Mercédès (Joanne Boag and Carolyn Dobbin), inspire thrills through their love of freedom and a life lived under the starry skies.

The Wales Millennium Centre is blessed with a surtitles facility that allows the reading of simultaneous translations into both Welsh and English, from whatever the original language. Always a boon, but tonight being able to read the lyrics to such well know songs is an added treat.

It would be a poor production indeed that could damage the reputation of this timeless and effervescent opera, but experiencing the full verve and nerve tingling excitement of all involved tonight shows assuredly this treasured member of the canon to be more than safe after such richly dramatic evening.

By Jane Oriel