Carmen: She’s beautiful and dangerous … and she’s having fun
A soldier falls for a rebel in an opera both femme-fatale cynical and genuinely emotional.
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin
★★★★
“If I love you, look out,” sings Carmen, a woman surrounded by dozens of admirers in a town square. Spelling out thoughts about desire with playful gestures and wide-eyed expressions, you could easily miss a line that sounds like a threat.
There is a lot stacked in Georges Bizet’s opéra comique. In a hot, humid version of Seville as a garrison town, where women from the local factory blow cigarette smoke at adoring soldiers, everyone is in agreement that Carmen is extraordinary. Any production could be cloying in its emphasis on Carmen’s superiority, especially if the character were given to anyone less charismatic than Paula Murrihy. When floating through the entrancing aria “Habanera,” she climbs a gigantic billboard and tears down a poster displaying a grinning woman with red lipstick, taking the titan’s place. Murrihy jolts every movement and vocal note with moxie, as Carmen sings to her mesmerised audience below.
The streets and buildings do stretch wide in Carmen’s universe, as Irish National Opera’s mega co-production with Opera Philadelphia and Seattle Opera shows the expense to match. Various choruses come and go, turning the corners of set designer Gary McCann’s vast structures, to witness the corporeal Don José (Dinyar Vania) abandon his congenial wife and career when he is captured by another woman. (Carmen can charmingly escape arrest, and slip rope restraints onto your wrist when you’re not looking).
It pays off for director Paul Curran’s production to lean into this femme-fatalism, as the 1950s details of McCann’s design, backed by a moody purple sunset carving out silhouettes of palm trees, nod towards film noir. We see Carmen temptingly unzip the back of her dress for Don José just as a stage curtain descends, and eventually transform into a rebel leader, wearing a trench coat, with less patience than before. If Vania’s Don José is to be led into a deadly trap, he does so with fascinatingly blank expressions, stirred by feelings of missing his mother when women are obviously trying to seduce him. Is this soldier just a dope?
There is fun in setting traps, yet the production’s cynicism also thoughtfully cedes to genuine emotion at points. When Carmen says “I’m in love,” confiding in her friends, Murrihy’s face suddenly lights up with a smile. On the precipice of a break-up, Vania’s restrained expressions contrast with a voice that is full of tremendous yearning.
A more striking juxtaposition comes in Celine Byrne’s immensely smooth, bright delivery as Don José’s wholesome wife. Compared to Murrihy’s vocal, which is snaggy and incising, the difference is the same as that between an angel and an assassin.
If this is a Carmen capable of real relationships, the uplifting aria sung by a celebrated bullfighter (“As you fight, dream of the love that awaits you,” sings an excellent Milan Siljanov) resonates equally with a growing militant resistance, as it does when we see the wobbles of a romance that may not last.
Of course, that separation will darken with jealousy and eventually violence. Curran’s production doesn’t stray from those final, pre-determined events, where it becomes clear that one thing more dangerous than Carmen is being Carmen. Before that, when a dangerous ex-lover confronts her, she surprisingly extends her arms as if to provoke him to attack. She doesn’t have any fear. There is too much fun to be had.
Runs until 12th March. bordgaisenergytheatre.ie
Friends,
In case you missed it, my review of Sh*t (“Sh*t: This hard-hitting play is profane but not profound”) was published recently in the Irish Times.
- Chris
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