Revolutionary rhythmic ride
Goes to see at Sadler’s Wells and finds the Bizet opera has been given a tropical twist
Bizet’s bewitching, intoxicating and indomitable heroine is back, and her timing could not be more perfect for these heady, summer nights. Carmen has been adapted more often than any other opera. So how do you breathe new life into an overfamiliar work? British director Christopher Renshaw’s answer is to give it a generous measure of tropicana by mixing classic opera with salsa, mambo and rumba, and a Cuban cast.
Renshaw, who cut his teeth at Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House and has form on Broadway with the Tony Award-winning The King and I and in the West End with We Will Rock You, has fleshed out the hot-blooded opera – in Spanish with English surtitles – for an atmospheric transplant from early-19th-century Spain to pre-revolutionary Cuba. Some may argue that this is a gimmick designed to make traditional opera more palatable to mainstream theatre audiences, but whether you believe Carmen to be a tragic heroine or a feminist icon, the story of this fiery spirit tormented by the love she feels for two men remains powerful.
Carmen has been reworked in numerous forms, including, on film, by directors Cecil B DeMille, Otto Preminger and Jean-Luc Godard; Tom and Jerry even got in on the act in 1962’s Carmen Get It. More recently, Matthew Bourne’s dance adaptation, The Car Man, took its lead from the much-filmed novel The Postman Always Rings Twice to reimagine the opera as a noirish tale set in Fifties America. But it is Preminger’s 1954 movie Carmen Jones, itself adapted from Oscar Hammerstein II’s famous 1943 Broadway musical, which transposed Bizet’s opera to an African-American community, from which Renshaw takes inspiration.
The story retains the key elements of the original, and from her first silhouetted entrance, jazz singer Luna Manzanares Nardo as Carmen is firmly in the spotlight. Her rich, smoky mezzo-soprano tones are well suited to the sultry seductress, and she services her character with a heavy dose of playful insolence as Carmen’s fight for her own independence is mirrored by the spirit of the Cuban Revolution. However, it is Albita Rodriguez, as newly invented character La Señora, a maternal seer who predicts the fate of the protagonists, who nearly steals the show. She has multiple roles (narrator, androgynous croupier in the Havana Casino and boxing referee), but it is in this part that she excels, representing the heart and soul of Cuba.
Meanwhile, the most tender performances – and emotive vocals – are provided by Carmen’s first love interest, soldier José, played by Saeed Mohamed Valdés, and his village maiden fiancée Marilù (enchanting soprano Cristina Rodríguez Pino).
The triumph is the music. Working with local musicians to tweak Bizet’s score to Cuban rhythms, native-born Alex Lacamoire, the orchestrator behind Hamilton and In the Heights, spices up the familiar melodies of the Habanera and the Toreador Song with salsa and merengue rhythms. The results are fast-paced, with the opera’s famous five-note motif used to rich effect by the 14-strong Latin big band and urgency added to Carmen’s show-stopping aria of flirtation.
While the music never falters, the dance content is comparatively weak, however. There are spontaneous bursts of African-Caribbean contemporary dance, which when fused with classical ballet techniques and the freewheeling aesthetics of hip-hop, create a carnival atmosphere. The Cuban rhythms mainly come alive in the boxing ring when the Toreador Song becomes a salsa for Joaquín García Mejías’s boxing champ, and in the Havana club when the ensemble dance a peppy mambo.
It’s a mixed bag – but what is undeniable is the vibrancy and spirit of the cast, who commit wholeheartedly to the pulsating rhythm of the ride.