On paper, it was the billing that audiences had been waiting for. In the title role, the world’s go-to Carmen, Russian-born London-based mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina. As Don Jose, the rare man who does not fall for the Spanish temptress, British tenor Freddie De Tommaso.
The careers of each have had a storybook quality. Akhmetshina arrived in the capital in her late teens with no English, as a Jette Parker young artist at the Royal Opera House, soon appearing with others from the scheme at Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017, in the scaled-down Peter Brook version of Bizet’s Carmen, La Tragédie de Carmen. The impression she made was enough to propel her into the main house, covering for an indisposed lead in Barrie Kosky’s heavyweight production.
Freddie De Tommaso was similarly thrust unexpectedly into the limelight when Bryan Hymel withdrew from the first night of Tosca in 2021, and the younger tenor went on for the second and third acts. He was the first British tenor to sing the role of Cavaradossi for 60 years, and the youngest artist ever to take the role at Covent Garden. He brought the house down then, and, alongside Akhmetshina he did so again when the pair appeared together for the first time in Britain (they have recently worked together in Vienna), in the first revival of the Royal Opera’s new Carmen.
An unashamedly partisan audience yelped with delight as both artists ticked off their big numbers with equal panache, but their enthusiasm was well grounded. Akhmetshina, who is booked to sing Carmen here, there and everywhere, including Verona, in July, has been the ideal Carmen, vocally and physically, since that small-scale debut. There are other artists who make a very good fist of this sensuous role. But there are, frankly, fewer tenors who make Don Jose plausible, for he must be uninterested (in Carmen) but not uninteresting, desirable but dull. De Tommaso manages to find that rare balance, as a stolid upholder of the law who is initially unmoved by his feline prisoner but ultimately won over by Carmen’s skilful seduction.
In Damiano Michieletto’s arid production, set in the style-desert Seventies, Don Jose plods on with the paperwork when Carmen is detained after a catfight. Always hovering in his emotional hinterland, and on stage in this production, is his mother, a character normally spoken of but unseen. Her physical presence – were there fewer entrances in this revival, or have we just learnt to blot her out? – adds little, and her emissary Micaëla, is cursed by costume designer Carl Teti with a hideous outfit, making her an implausible near rival to Carmen for Don Jose’s affections.
There are distractions aplenty for the eye, in short, not least an often needless revolve, all of which make the quite wonderful singing more welcome. Who could resist Akhmetshina’s opulent lower notes and athletic top notes coupled with her easy movement? De Tomasso’s poor conflicted Don Jose is by turns elegiac and gauche, his high diminuendo in ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetée’ a daring peek into the abyss.
Chilean soprano Yaritza Véliz’s frumpy Micaëla grew in strength. The rich-voiced Mercédès of Chinese-born mezzo-soprano Jingwen Cai and Armenian soprano Marianna Hovanisyan’s coltish Frasquita pick up on Akhmetshina’s vocal and physical agility. Like South African baritone Siphe Kwani, singing sleazy barman Dancaïro, they are Jette Parker artists. Baritone Ross Ramgobin as Moralès raised the bar from the outset. Lukasz Goliński is not the flashiest Escamillo, but he is distinctly short-changed by a cuadrilla of one.
The Royal Opera Chorus of largely aimless townsfolk is swelled by hardworking children, but the humour is laboured. Under conductor Sir Mark Elder, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House took off lickety-split, but tempi flagged later at times. As so often with this indefatigable orchestra, the woodwind playing was heartstoppingly beautiful.
Carmen is a co-production with Teatro Real, Madrid and La Scala, Milan.