Carmen review – Chaieb beguiles as the tragic heroine in uneven production

‘A woman of deep courage and life and vitality who is struggling against the system for her freedom and will scale anything for that,” is how US director Diane Paulus describes Carmen in a programme interview for her new staging of Bizet’s masterpiece.

The production, which opens this year’s Glyndebourne festival and dominates it with a season-long, double-cast run is an uneven piece of theatre, unsubtle and in-your-face where Bizet, one of opera’s great realists, is complex and probing, and at times curiously passionless for a work that can still present enormous challenges in its depiction of the irrational nature of desire.

Transposing Carmen to a drab present has become almost de rigueur of late. Paulus relocates it to a faceless, unnamed city and its environs in a (possibly) far-right country, somewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, though the exact locale is unclear and the political system behind it nebulously defined. And yet Paulus’s glosses can feel unduly heavy. We are in a world of military violence and heightened masculine aggression where soldiers arbitrarily accost people in the street and leer at the women from the cigarette factory, while they take their breaks in what to all intents and purposes resembles a prison yard. Lilas Pastia’s tavern, meanwhile, has become a grungy nightclub where Dmitry Cheblykov’s Escamillo and his entourage come to flash their pecs and pick up girls during opening time, but where smugglers hatch plots after hours to help refugees across the border.

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Freedom here is as much political as it is personal, and whenever Rihab Chaieb’s excellent Carmen sings of “liberté” she defiantly raises a clenched fist in a power salute. Unlike some interpreters, who primarily suggest laconic self-assurance, Chaieb is rebellious, mocking, manipulative. We’ve heard warmer voices in the role, but her way with words is insightful, beguiling and always telling. A gentle irony courses through her tone in the Séguedille, its innuendo disastrously misinterpreted as something deeper by Dmytro Popov’s José. Later, as their affair sours, her voice curdles in loathing and contempt.

Popov, regrettably, is by no means her equal. Vocally, he’s comfortable with Bizet’s wide range and tricky dynamics, but dramatically, he’s too soft, rarely convincing us of the man’s horrific potential for violence. Cheblykov, on the other hand, is a fine Escamillo, handsomely sung and attractive in a very macho way, if a bit dim. And Sofia Fomina makes a touching Micaëla, lovely in her aria, strong in her portrayal of the girl’s unwavering moral certainty and ultimate compassion. You can’t fault the London Philharmonic’s playing, which is all detailed brilliance, though Robin Ticciati pushes the score hard and could be more yielding at times. The choral singing is excellent, particularly fine in the last act.