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A fatal lady

London
Wiltons Music Hall
06/05/2001 -  and 15, 17, 20, 22, 27, 29 June
Georges Bizet: Carmen
Sibulele Mjali (Escamillo), Sandile Kamle (Dancaïro), Luzuko Mahlaba (Don José), Pauline Malefane (Carmen), Bongiwe Mapassa (Frasquita), Pumeza Matshikiza (Mercedes), Andries Mbali (Lillas Pastia), Bongani Mbato (Remendado), Pauline du Plessis (Micaela), Zorro Sidloyi (Zuniga), Andre Strijdom (Morales)

Old Mahogany Bar Band, Spier Festival Company

Charles Hazlewood (conductor/music director), Mark Dornford-May (director)

Perhaps the only way to do Carmen is with performers that don't know what an opera house is like, and what the audience expects of this opera. That's probably not quite true of all the singers in the production at Wilton's Music Hall, but they deliver the work everyone knows without a hint of complacency. The sleazy allure of street life, low life and all-out criminal life, lived by individuals, are all there, with the emphasis on life, while death is never far away: the woman Carmen has stabbed in the first act is definitely dead, José tries to strangle Carmen in act two, and the military are there to kill. The setting is roughly the present day, and pretty much any occupied regional city, though the lyrics still refer to Seville, and Carmen and her pals wear Spanish dress for the bull fight. The result could be as close to what operatic realism was meant to be as you could hope to find today, and totally engaging even for the jaded. There is, by the way, a large amount of cocaine: those who think it doesn't belong in opera have been warned.

Wilton's Music Hall is of course very unlike an opera house in many respects. It is comparatively small and close to shoe-box shaped, with a small balcony on three sides. The main drawback to the house is that the orchestra (for this production an ad-hoc but well-rehearsed band of first rate London players) is squeezed into the old bar to the right of the stage, from where it tends to overwhelm the singers on the stage. The stage is also very small, and like recent productions, Carmen overflowed into the auditorium by using the balcony and the central aisle. The choruses, often sung by the company spread throughout the house, were at times overpowering, but always exhilarating. The acoustics are very supportive for the solo voices, but these singers didn't need flattering. Few of them sounded particularly trained, but they all sang easily and, incredibly, naturally. The music seemed for most of them to be an extra means of expression, not the reason for what they were doing.

Pauline Malefane was instantly recognisable as Carmen, utterly entrancing and dangerous. She has a glorious voice that could turn into a big-league mezzo or to a modern blues singer's, with lots of raw edges (and a very obvious break) but amazing depth and richness. Pauline du Plessis was a tougher than usual Micaela, free of sentimentality, and searingly lucid and intense. She has a trained operatic voice already, but a dramatic sense that could send her into music theatre as well.

As Don José, Luzuko Mahlaba was the only singer who seemed to be pushing his voice at times, perhaps simply because he has so much singing. But his voice is fine, and he was perfect as the amiable joe who loves his mother and gets pushed over the edge by desire can't understand. The rest of the soldiers and criminals were suitably macho, every one of them singing as if that was how he said things all the time. Sibulele Mjali stepped in as Escamillo at a day's notice, and sang the role with amazing confidence and ease. But then this is a company that isn't short of voices or actors who can use them.


H.E. Elsom

 

 

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