Curtain Call. Carmen and Micaela to the leftt of the conductor, Don Jose and Escamillo to the right. The two walls form the basis for the sets in all 4 acts.
Story. See previous post.
Conductor - Matthias Foremny. Don Jose - Andrea Shin, Escamillio - Tuomas Pursio, Zuniga - Sejong Chang, Carmen - Khartuna Mikaberidze, Micaela - Olena Tokar, Lillas Pastia - Alexander Range.
View from the Opera House into the square Augustusplatz. Again a lot of construction.
We are in Leipzig for a few days with the objective of going to a few of the Bach Fest 2023 events. This clearly isn't part of that "program."
For last year's Wagner Festival, English surtitles were provided. When I looked into the situation this year, I found out English is provided for a limited number of performances. Since Leipzig is becoming an international city, I imagine that would mean many in the audience will be lost, or choose not to go altogether. Since Carmen's story line is pretty straightforward (if one had seen it before, or takes the time to read up on the synopsis), we decided to give it a go. To underline my point, the opera Udine by Lortzing is on tonight (typing this on June 10), we decided to skip it as we don't want to feel lost in a new (to us) opera. Which is too bad. The logic behind the decision escapes me, English is widely spoken in Germany, and they already have the English surtitles ready to go.
Bottom line, however, is that we enjoyed the performance. We have remarked how German operas tend to emphasize violence, and was ready for it as we are talking about smugglers, soldiers, and Carmen being murdered, after all. The show turned out not to be macabre at all. Carmen was shot, and we see a blood-stained wall behind her, but that was as violent as it gets.
The singing is splendid. Acoustics in the small auditorium is always excellent. Bizet's music is simply lovely. Past performances of Carmen I have seen have her playing castanets in the tavern song. Here that sound came out of the orchestra. The conductor had a tendency to emphasize the down beats, a bit too much for my taste. Carmen also ended her phrases a bit abruptly. Either I got used to it, or things improved as the performance unfolded.
The set is as simple as it can get, even for Leipzig. There are basically two walls that can be configured as a town square, as the cigarette factory, as the smugglers' cave, and as the bullfighting stadium. Sometimes movable stairs are used so singers can reach different levels. The overall effect is on the amateurish end of the spectrum. The music made up for it.
Our seats in the middle section of the balcony gave us a good view of the stage, use of binoculars is not really needed as the auditorium is small. We could only see the far sections of the orchestra, though.
Having had some snacks at the hotel, we decided to skip dinner.
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