Carmen 1808 at Union Theatre was a bold experiment that really worked

Carmen is probably my favourite opera, it ought to be given the number of times that I have seen it, so I was always going to be interested in seeing Carmen 1808 at Union Theatre, particularly as it was at Union Theatre where I had seen so many excellent musical shows and it was by The Phil Willmott Company of which the same is true.

There was only one date in the run that I could make which made the decision easier and I duly booked myself a place for 13 February for £22.5.

The evening did not get off to a good start and a late running meeting meant that I missed the usual 5:43 train from Teddington which would have got me there spot on 6:30 when the box office opened. Instead I caught a train soon after 6pm and got there at 6:45pm. That put me in the third batch for entry, the first time ever that I had not been in the first.

Then my luck changed and despite my late admittance to the theatre I was still able to claim a place in the front row.

The first thing that struck me was the similarity to the stage design for Heartbreak House, which was understandable as it was in the same season. There were differences but the basic design of a raised section in the middle and steps up on both sides was the same.

Carmen 1808 was billed as a musical rather than an opera and running at ninety minutes straight through it was considerably shorter than the opera so I had no real idea what to expect. Admittedly I could have read the details online beforehand but doing that is almost cheating.

I am sure that there is a word for this that I do not know but Carmen 1808 was a companion piece to Carmen sharing some of the characters, locations,  themes and songs but it was also had a very different plot. More than a homage but less than a remake. Somebody should do a Venn Diagram.

The main story was about Napoleon's victory over Spain and the efforts of the resistance. Alongside that we still had the love triangle/square/pentagram between Carmen, a soldier, a woman from his past and Carmen's other lovers. There were several other elements from the original Carmen, like the reading of the cards. All nice to see if you knew Carmen but also understandable if it was new to you.

The music followed the same plan, some songs were copied and changed along the way. Toreador had to be in there and it appear as a song about swearing allegiance to the Spanish flag. There was no toreador.

The singing was more musical than opera with many pieces using the whole cast and there were fewer solo pieces. Toreador was an example of this, in the opera just the toreador sings the song but here it was everybody. There were some solos though and the painter/narrator was the star here.

One thing that worked very well was using the overture as a big dance number to open the show and to reprise it at the end. I also loved the comic song that was inserted along the way. This was the one time that the French featured and they told us in song just how good they were. The song produced my favourite line of the night, "Did we mensh, we are French?".

Carmen 1808 was a nice mix of a dark story, France's subjugation of Spain, with the light human foibles that drive so much of life, particularly when there are people like Carmen around. And being a new story I was keen to see how it ended. I was engrossed.

The concept of changing something as familiar as Carmen into a musical and playing around with it so much may sound sacrilegious but it really worked and I had a lot of fun watching it unfold in front of me.

Carmen by Ormond Opera was wonderful

I first discovered Ormond Opera in 2016 with their production of Madama Butterfly and that was so good that when they announced that they were doing Carmen then booking it was one of the easiest decisions that I have ever made.

It was still an easy decision when they announced that due to illness the performance that I had booked for had been downgraded to a full dress rehearsal.

This time I brought some friends with me and there were six of us altogether.

I have seen Carmen many times, so much so that it warrants its own tag in this blog (and I've left some performances out), so the story was never going to surprise me which meant that I could largely ignore the English translations displayed at the side and could focus on the music, the singing and the acting, all of which were superb.

The music came from just one piano and that was plenty enough sound to fill the church hall. We were warned that the singing might not be quite right but I found the exact opposite to be true, all the voices were good and many were superb. Carmen was one of those.

The acting made the performance and there were many nice little touches, several of which happened away from the centre of the action so I had to keep an eye on every part of the stage all the time. Worth a mention in this respect were Carmen's two companions who carried on their role playing when they took the curtain calls at the end.

In some ways Carmen is an easy opera to get right because it has so many good tunes in it, and it has a pretty strong story, but that is no excuse to take things easy and Ormond Opera put the work in to make this a memorable performance.

Whatever Ormond Opera do next I hope to be there to see it.

After the opera five of us retired to the Dukes Head for some serious conversations and a few beers until they threw us out at half past midnight. It was a fine and fitting end to a wonderful evening.

Carmen at Glyndebourne (2015)

My second visit to Glyndebourne in 2015 was a rather obvious visit to see Carmen. There had been much interest in this from the people that we take with us and I took the arbitrary decision to let the people who had not been to Glyndebourne before come to Carmen with us.

As first-timers they were not sure how much they wanted to pay and had no idea on where to sit so they had to get some advice and guidance on this. Initially this did not work well and Glyndebourne were not able to offer us the tickets we wanted, a combination of our place in the ballot and the popularity of the opera were to blame. After some discussion with guests and box office we ended up with two pairs of tickets with each pair having different priced seats. This is what we settled for: Red Upper Circle B46/47 £150/£60 and C47/48 £150/£60.

The £90 difference between adjacent seats was due to restricted views but the interference was minimal, as you can see from the photo that I took from my seat, and that made seats B47 and C28 excellent value. I might try and get them again!

There is a semblance of a routine, if not a ritual, about going to Glyndebourne and that includes divvying up the catering duties for the four food courses (cakes, starter, main, cheeses). Our guests suggested making a flan from their home-grown asparagus and it was easy to say yes to that.

On the day the weather was fine and that meant we could do the usual walk around the grounds (once we had consumed some tea and cake, of course) but it was not quite warm enough to entice us towards the Pimms tent. The gardens at Glyndebourne are always enjoyable to walk around and they are even better when you show them to somebody for the first time. The lake with the diving sculpture is still the highlight with the border by the house a close second.

The two hours or so before the opera always goes faster than I think it should and it was soon time to go in for the performance.

I have seen Carmen quite a few times, in various disguises, despite it being far from my favourite opera. The plot is reasonable but with the couple exceptions that you can immediately think of I find the songs lacking. They are generally quite pretty but none of them grab me.

Glyndebourne compensated for the slight deficit in music by constructing impressive sets and putting lots of busy people in them, including what looked like a whole class of children who were obviously very pleased to be there. The singing was excellent, as always.

The production lifted my spirits and despite the almost relentless gloom of the story (the end is clearly prophesied early on) it proved to be the ideal opera to take first-timers to and not a bad one for regulars either.

A lively The Car Man thrills at Wimbledon Theatre

Every time I write about dance I say that I should see more of it but, Sadler's Wells apart (and that is not very close) chances are few and far between so I make an effort to get to the ones that I can. This time that effort was forking out £36 for a seat (E23) in the fifth row of the Dress Circle.

It was an easy decision to break my own rules on pricing and seating to see The Car Man again, a show I had only seen once before way back in 2007. Not only had I enjoyed it then but it was by Matthew Bourne and I have loved everything of his that I have seen.

I try to plan my work around my theatre and had booked for a Friday so that I could work at home and then catch a couple of buses into Wimbledon for the evening show, pausing at Mai Thai on the way for something tasty to eat. I like to have a designated restaurant for each theatre that I go to regularly and Mai Thai fits the bill nicely.

In a break from what was tradition I did not go to the pub across the road or to the theatre bar before the show. I was not overly cutting down on my drinking but I was easing one or two out of the schedule just to help.

The view was much better than I expected with my fear of taller people sitting in front of me and I had a good view of the stage with no interruptions.

It had been a long time since I had last seen The Car Man so I sat down ready to be surprised and delighted all over again.

It was described as a reimagining of Carmen, rather than a retelling, and the story was very different. There was a cameo of the original in one scene with some Flamenco dancers in a bar reenacted part of her tragic story.

In The Car Man, Matthew Bourne played to all his strengths with lots of vibrant dancing, mostly in groups and with lots of things going on at the same time all across the stage. It was boisterous, energetic, flamboyant, sexy and huge fun. It may have been inspired by Carmen but there the mood is almost unremittingly gloomy (as the ending is long predicted) whereas here it was mostly jolly, despite some of the dark things that happened.

The poster at the top says it all really and, for once, was a true reflection of what the show was like. This is how I would dance if I could dance, but as I cannot dance like that I'll happily settle for watching other people do so instead.

This was, of course, a dance with a story to tell and there was plenty of acting as well as dancing, as always with Matthew Bourne. And, as with the dancing, this was not confined to the lead roles. This was an ensemble performance and a very good one too.

It was also good to see The Car Man playing to a packed house and showing that dance can be as popular and as entertaining as the familiar musicals that often show up at theatres like Wimbledon.

The only regret from the evening was realising that I had no more dance in my  diary to look forward too. Sadly, that is a recurring problem.

Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall

If Swan Lake is the definitive ballet then Carmen is the definitive opera. It has the story and the songs to justify that claim.

I have seen a few very different versions of Carmen in recent years, including two dance versions, and this was the chance to see it performed as a "normal" opera.

Well, not that normal. This was at the Royal Albert Hall and I expected, and saw, a performance that put a lot of emphasis on the staging to make a spectacular show. This is the first time I have seen people juggling fire in Carmen.

I had not given it much thought beforehand, perhaps I should, so it was a surprise to discover that it was sung in English and there were no sur-titles.

I was on the uppermost level, the cheap seats, which gave a good view of the stage at the expense of some difficulty in hearing some of the singers. There were no problems listening to Don José whose voice was loud, clear and beautiful. He was the star of the show.

Carmen herself was not bad either and she had the advantage of looking like a gypsy seductress with black shoulder length wavy hair and head-turning looks. 

The stage was set in the round, understandable given the shape of the Royal Albert Hall, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra filling a wedge to one side. They were superb too.

Perhaps it was the distraction of what was happening on the stage or I was just lucky to be sitting amongst educated people but the annoyances were less than usual. There was some whispering but that was all there was and these days that is remarkable. The lack of sweet wrappers was much appreciated.

The lack of sur-titles and the distance from the stage made some of the lines hard to follow (not with the impeccable Don José) so it was useful that I knew the story quite well. There were some minor liberties made with the story due to the restrictions of the staging, i.e. the difficulty of reconfiguring it to make different scenes, and they may also have caused me to lose the thread at times.

Carmen was at its best when it filled the stage with people and, literally, played to the crowd. It was less successful in the quieter moments when the distance was more of a problem but even then the delightful music from the orchestra shone through and the opera never seriously flagged.

I am not sure that I would rush back to the Royal Albert Hall to see another opera there as it takes an opera with the richness of Carmen to fill the large space, and there are not too many like that.

Carmen at Normansfield Theatre

If ever an event had "go to me" written all over it then it was this one.

Carmen is a great opera full of audience-friendly tunes, I had not been to the recently restored Victorian delight that is Normansfield Theatre before, and all the proceeds were for the charity that is based there, the Down’s Syndrome Association (Down's Syndrome takes its name from Dr John Langdon Down who established Normansfield Hospital).

So it came to pass that I went to my second opera of the year the day after the first one.

Arriving promptly (the internet and open data make catching buses so easy these days) I went downstairs to the temporary bar for a bottle of (sadly American) Budweiser. Even in the basement the building impressed with its period structure such as the decorated yet simple metal pillars, the sort that adorn railway stations across the country.

To add further interest there were a couple of large wooden models of ships and any boy, or any age, would be impressed by their level of detail and their scale.

Also impressive is the theatre itself.

The basic construction is like a school stage with a high platform and a flat hall filled with ordinary chairs.

The decoration is anything but ordinary and the hall is a richness of colour and detail. This tells you that something special is going to happen.

And it does.

The opening of Carmen reminds you just how tuneful the opera is as the overture plants tempting snippets of music that you know will be brought to fruition later.

The opera lives or dies on the person playing Carmen and to be a success she must both sing beautifully and convince you that she is a wild temptress who drives men crazy with desire for her. This Carmen comfortably accomplished both.

There were strengths and weaknesses elsewhere but the average performance was a high average and Carmen raised the overall score even higher.

I went expecting to enjoy the building and the music while putting up with the performance but that was just me being pessimistic and I delighted in all three. This was a jolly night out (despite all the on-stage drama) and one that I'll cherish.

Spanish story. French music. Slovak dancing. Great drama.

I love dance and am trying to find ways to see more of it. Mostly this means getting myself more organised!

The latest opportunity came via my Czech/Slovak connections through whom I learned that the Slovak Dance Theatre were performing their version of Carmen for two nights only at Jacksons Lane in Highbury.

I did not know anybody else who was going but I was free that evening and Highbury is not that hard to get to (when the Northern Line is working) so I thought that I would give it a go. And I'm glad that I did.

The first good news was that the tube strike had no impact on my travel and the second was that some people that I knew were also there. One of them, Ruzena, is Vice Chair of the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA) and she had done some publicity for the event and had been rewarded with a ticket. A quick word with the organisers from here and I had a reserved seat too.

Jacksons Lane, a former church, looks to be an excellent community venue. The theatre seats around 120 people, there is a nice cafe that boasts a good selection of vegetarian food, a small bar and a mix of community spaces some of which were also in use that evening.

I had a little idea of what to expect from a short video but that's never a fair way to judge anything so I sat in my seat in the middle of the second-back row with an open mind.

The first thing you notice is that it's a small group so each of the dancers has several roles, sometimes crossing genders to do so.

The dancing is energetic and expansive making full use of the depth, width and height of the stage. The set remains constant and largely anonymous as a series of scenes are played out before it, smoothly flowing from one to the other as the story unfolds.

The tension of the drama is maintained throughout (there is no break) as we watch the various couples come together, argue, split, flirt, reconcile and, eventually, kill.

The standing ovation at the end was well deserved.

This is only the second time that I've gone to see dancing by myself at short notice and it's worked better than expected both times. Must do it again.

Matthew Bourne's The Car Man is a feast of dancing

The banners outside of the theatre say "Sadler's Wells is dance" and it is London's best venue for dance offering a vary interesting and varied programme throughout the year. Sadler's Wells is in Islington, which means that it is slightly the wrong side of London for me but the tortuous journey there is well worth it for the special performances, such as the one that I went to last night.

Matthew Bourne's The Car Man has been revived from the original 2000 show and is playing to packed audiences again. Matthew Bourne may be mostly known for his all male Swan Lake but he is now responsible for a number of shows that are popular with audiences and critics alike.

The Car Man takes some of the music and a little of the drama of Carmen but all that really means is that many of the tunes are familiar. The story is set in 50's America in a garage and adjacent diner and revolves around a new arrival to the town, the car man. The plot is gripping enough but it is the dancing that captivates you.

There is a large cast and most of them are dancing most of the time, often in little cameos away from the centre of the stage. At times it is difficult to decide which dancers to follow but that only adds to the experience. It is a truly stunning and enjoyable show.