Grand Theatre, Leeds; Royal Festival Hall, London
You may have heard about the tomato ketchup. Or the muzzled killer dog named Molly. Or the transposition of Bizet's masterpiece from Seville, a noble city in the Spanish south, to Seville, Ohio, a hick town in the American midwest. Forget flamenco ruffles and mantillas and the toreador's gold-embroidered suit of lights. Think, instead, of khaki army drill and fat rubberneckers in screechy Hawaiian shirts; of skinny blonde cheerleaders in itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny Lycra-stretchy short bikinis; of baseball, bare bums and American pizza. Think of ingrained, incoherent, inbred small-town violence from cradle to grave.
Opera North's new Carmen, the company's first for a dozen years, produced by Daniel Kramer and conducted by Andreas Delfs, waves a red rag at a pitbull with such flamboyance, attitude and venom that many will come out yelling for an antidote. You need not worry that the tedious Act III smugglers will tiptoe in, as so often, in black masks carrying bags marked "swag": they, along with a few other ponderous elements and an ensemble or two, have been cut ? hardly the first time in an opera which has spawned more reinterpretations, from Liszt transcriptions to tens of films to hip-hopera and Xhosa versions. This speeds up the action no end but leaves jaws hanging.
These sensational trappings, no more nor less controversial than the lavatories in Calixto Bieito's "dirty" Don Giovanni at ENO or the rats in Bayreuth's recent Lohengrin, are mere buttons and bows on the more serious approach which this team, together with designers Soutra Gilmour, Gabrielle Dalton and Charles Balfour, have attempted. Even if, inevitably, the production is the talking point, let us first put on record that musical standards are high, with the excellent Opera North orchestra full of vitality and brio, bringing out vivid detail in this revolutionary score with some excellent solo playing. Not all the singers quite hit the mark, but performances were at least secure and at best, especially in the case of Peter Auty's Don Jos� and Kostas Smoriginas's glowering Escamillo, fine indeed. Heather Shipp's highly physical Carmen has dark allure though her voice showed signs of fatigue on first night.
Inevitably, given the comprehen?siveness of the enterprise, some ideas work coruscatingly while others flail. Some performers are better at enacting them with the necessary conviction. Certain decisions, such as the over-frequent crowd whoops in chorus scenes, when Bizet's music has already jangled the nerves to high-pitched distraction, could be reduced for greater impact. Theatre previews are invaluable for giving performers a chance to adjust such tonal imbalances: for brightening this colour and damping that. Would that opera could afford the same. Too often the nervous skirmishes of opening night obscure a production's bigger ambitions, for the benefit of those racing to dismiss it all out of hand.
The Anglo-American Kramer is certainly unafraid of ideas. He has no interest in the kind of uniformly gleaming, intelligent but finally equable kind of production which Anglo-Saxon opera audiences, despite their best efforts, tend to crave. He pursues awkward truths in the most uncompromising and often volatile fashion. His ENO Punch and Judy hit hard in all senses and won awards. His Bluebeard's Castle is now enjoying critical success in Russia, championed by Valery Gergiev. But when it was seen in London in 2008, it was condemned for daring to compare the Duke, a man who has incarcerated seven wives but is unaccountably usually cast as a man of dignity, with Josef Fritzl and his Austrian cellar. It was regarded as beyond bad taste, though since when was the Bluebeard story in good taste?
This production, too, insinuates itself in a troubling, uncomfortable, at times maddening way. I've always, I admit, found Carmen ? girl, not opera ? a detestable creature, that ultimate, alluring, bitchy product of the male gaze. Men may adore her. Don't all women hate her? Kramer forces you to rethink. She's not just a sexy tart but a broken woman who knows only violence and abuse. The unpromising love of Don Jos� ? usually cast as a squidgy, unattractive doughnut but riddled with his own violent past ? offers an escape which inevitably fails.
It may not be a revolutionary view; rather, a shift in emphasis, but it feels raw and credible. As the drama unfolds and the crowds fall away, so the production, moving from twinkling coloured lights and the benign shelter of a buckeye tree ? the sets look good ? in Acts III and IV come into far sharper focus. From the card scene to the end, Kramer and his cast are at their most assured. Carmen yields to her death in an almost suicidal act of self-sacrifice.
True, there's a way to go. The dialogue, awkward in French but still preferable to English, is as yet bumpy and hesitant. The silent pause is surprisingly difficult in opera, compared with spoken theatre: you always wonder when the music will start. Anne Sophie Duprels's big-haired Mica�la is, for once, an independent hussy, not the usual virginal nun. You can be loyal without being a doe-eyed sop, she seems to say, not unreasonably. A new cast takes over later in the run, with promising American mezzo Sandra Piques Eddy making her Opera North debut. Try it. Don't expect to sit back while the old familiar tunes bubble over you. Go prepared for combat.
On Thursday all was progressing well, with just a jot too much mellifluous charm at Juan Diego Fl�rez's Rosenblatt recital, with pianist Vincenzo Scalera, at a packed Festival Hall. This Peruvian megastar is still the only leggiero tenor who can take on the Pavarotti mantle ? without the excess baggage or white-handkerchief fuss ? in terms of natural resonance, unforced musical expressivity and purity of tone, from unforced bottom and middle range up to top C (and above) brilliance. His naturally sympathetic manner and clean looks, together with his own refusal to stray too far from French-Italian bel canto territory, have set him apart as a musician of rare intelligence and self-discipline.
So when, after some noble but slightly tight-throated Mozart and a charming barcarole, he launched into the magnificent "Qui tollis peccata mundi" from Rossini's Messa di Gloria, voice now fully opened and relaxed, and suddenly muttered "Shit!", in impeccably accented English, we were all alarmed. What was this collision of sacred and profane? He had jumped a line and this momentary lapse won him applause and laughter, after which the whole recital, including some powerful tango-inspired songs by Luis Prado (b 1970), passed off in genial mood. Before a muezzin-like Zarzuela encore, "Adios, Granada", he apologised for his bad language. "Federer does it too," he said in defence. "But in singing, unlike tennis, there are no penalties." There are, of course. Ask Rolando Villaz�n, to name only one of Fl�rez's struggling tenorial colleagues. But a loving audience can be the overriding umpire.
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