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There are strange people here! ”, The choir was astonished as always at first – and had a special reason on Sunday. After 42 years with the direction of “Carmen” by Franco Zeffirelli, Calixto Bieito has made his entrance into the State Opera, and Ella replaces the familiar idyll of postcards with bleak prospects. Bizet’s opera hit now takes place in a region where children beg instead of playing, soldiers shoulder begging with machine guns, and smugglers don’t make romantic bonfires but grab a bottle in a worn-out Mercedes. This world is ugly enough! A phone booth, a flagpole, that’s all there is at the beginning. Not even the cigarette factory where Carmen works. Instead, a thick cloud of fog hangs over the scene – possibly an indication that only the tobacco business is flourishing here.
It’s not strong
Despite these images: Calixto Bieito, enfant terrible of the 2000s, did not create strong things with his “Carmen”, but rather a soft type director’s theater. The three hours of opera, supposedly set in Spain under the Franco dictatorship, loosen its miserableness with show values that nostalgically refer to the 70s and that sometimes allow a touch of ¡Olé! Folklore! Above all, Bieito does not touch history against the grain. Not Carmen who shot her lover Don José. The action unfolds as usual.
Unfortunately, this show sometimes seems a bit poor in detail and often so conventional that the outfit degenerates into an accessory. Only here and there are personal direction and scene combined to create coherent actions, for example, when Don José and Micaëla, who loves him very much, take photos together for their distant mother in the village. Strong images are generally in short supply. It is impressive when the masses watch the entrance of a bullfighter onto the ramp that only they can see, but for opera veterans it is a striking memory of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s “Carmen”.
Bieito’s director, who is already 22 years old, is not upset, he is not indignant, but he is not sure either. However, or perhaps precisely because of that, he has been touring the world of opera for decades and is now also at his home in Vienna with neo-director Bogdan Ro ?? čić. It is not without a certain irony that a former director inherits a Methuselah here.
Intensity for the ears
Musically, however, the evening is far above the everyday level: the premiere in front of (almost) empty rows, postponed two weeks ago due to positive corona tests and now broadcast via streaming and ORF III, impressed with an ensemble. powerful and consistent.
The overwhelming Anita Rachvelishvili, who recently recovered from a corona infection. The Georgian lulls her Don José with dark and seductive tones, shoots her arias of bravery with the power of at least three of Carmen and gives him outbursts of anger of volcanic force.
There can only be one Don José, who in real life is called Piotr Beczała. And the Polish is really there as a noble step and provides further proof of his market leadership among the tenors. Even under high pressure, his voice reliably delivers sound splendor and conveys the fervor that ultimately transforms the good soldier into a jealous assassin – a voice like glowing liquid metal. Erwin Schrott remains a virile rival of Escamillo, he sings the Gockelrolle as usual in a casual way, a little out of the ideal line, but rolling covering self-love. And Micaëla de Vera-Lotte Boecker? Shake off the pallor of the good peasant whore as she intensely intensifies her soprano sound in a fight with competitor Carmen. Not forgetting the melodious sound of many small roles, such as Peter Kellner’s massive Zuniga and Szilvia Vörös’s magnificent Mercédès.
House debutant Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts the State Opera Choir and Orchestra with a sure hand, without making the most of the musical flow of emotions, but with a captivating delicacy in the soft passages. In any case, congratulations to a singing festival that will hopefully one day intoxicate fans of the Vienna opera live in the hall.
