Russian State Opera shows Carmen off in fine style

Until now, Perth Concert Hall has not received opera companies outside festival time and Carmen has probably not been given professionally in Perth since before the war.

That drought was brought to an end with a visit by the Russian State Opera, who got to know the facilities when their ballet arm came last year.

It was good to see the stalls packed out by an audience many of whom were seeing Bizet’s masterpiece for the first time.

The simple sets worked well on the whole, particularly in the first and last acts set in Seville – a masonry arch at each side represented entrance to a tobacco factory or bullring as required.

The backcloths gave an unusually good sense of perspective.

The difficulty was with the night scene up in the mountains, where the bright snowy rock and dazzling campfire lacked atmosphere.

The orchestra under conductor Grigorii Arkhipov gave a brisk account of a lovely score and the evening passed quickly.

Admittedly there were some cuts to speed things along. Even the lovely flute solo at the start of act three was omitted along with the smugglers’ quintet.

Most of the cast were young and looked well in their traditional costumes.

Liubov Dobrynina made a lively Carmen and Dmitry Semkin showed off a ringing tenor as Jose.

Pavel Kriuchko was an excellent Escamillo. Perhaps best of all was the sweet-toned soprano of Alina Polova as Micaela.