Guy Willoughby
theatre
Georges Bizet may have died of a broken heart due to the jeering reception his masterpiece, Carmen, received in 1875, but opera-lovers ever since can’t seem to get enough of this torrid tale of a gypsy’s fickle but tempestuous love.
The new Spier company, in their second production, are finding their feet as well as their voices, with the female chorus being at the moment stronger and more focused than their male counterparts. The Spier Orchestra, conducted by Charles Hazelwood, is affecting in the woodwinds and by the end of the opening night the whole ensemble was shimmered with precision and colour.
In her solo debut University of Cape Town student Pauline Malefane, as the fiery, man-eating Carmen, smoulders with sensuality, but vocally she does not command the stage. Carmen is one of those great operatic roles that must be overwhelmed rather than merely filled and Malefane has a way to go in mustering her resources: what is lacking right now, I think, is that mysterious component called confidence.
British tenor James Cleverton’s Escamillo is a rich, swashbuckling creation, very much at home in the romantic-heroic tradition. Alison Rae Jones, unfortunately often the subject of muted lighting, was truly affecting as Carmen’s virtuous rival, Michaela. But the evening’s star was Luzuko Mahlaba, who turned Don Jos Carmen’s rejected but faithful lover into a love-torn tragic figure of heroic proportions.
British Director Charles Dornford-May has opted for an eclectic, vaguely local setting that traverses time and place in unsettling fashion. Late 19th-century Seville gives way to, well, it’s not clear where, with Delia Peel’s cramped sawdust-and-stockcade set resembling the back of the vegetable market at Epping Industria.
Nowadays naturalistic sets of 19th century grand opera may be pass, but what we lose here is the romantic aura and idealism that is part of Carmen’s generic essence.
Another aspect of the eclectic local production values that bothered me was the libretto. Instead of the original French, Dornford-May has used a new English translation by British satirist Roy Bremner, largely leavened by extensive chunks of Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu. The notion of opera in local tongues may sound admirably anti-elitist, an attempt to draw wider audiences, but the effect is the opposite.
Instead of many people feeling alienated by one European language, we have many people feeling alienated by several African languages, in an ironic effect we may choose to call democratic elitism. The polyglot decision in Carmen undermines the coherence of an attractive production.
See Carmen at the Summer Festival at Spier on February 16 and 23, and March 1, 8 and 10. Contact Tel: (021) 809?1165