Sex sells Carmen as impresario triumphs in offstage drama

Carmen ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Carmen has died in multifarious ways over the years - even murdered on the bonnet of a car in one famous production - but last night's climax brought an added dimension.

At the end, our heroine was stabbed in the crotch by her lover. If this was a first, the male lead also underwent a reinterpretation. Don Jose, it was strongly suggested, was impotent.

Director Frank Dunlop, whose last outing was turning Cliff Richard into Heathcliffe decided that Don Jose was unable to be a real lover for the gypsy heroine, a point opera students might argue over, but equally a concept which gives his early love song for his mother an added frisson and could be said to explain Carmen's growing frustration.

In this latest venture into arena opera, the floor of the Royal Albert Hall was an all purpose bullring with seats all around it. Carmen herself was played by German mezzo soprano Yvonne Fontane, like all the cast not a big name that would have increased the pounds 2m production costs and put the ticket prices above producer Raymond Gubbay's pounds 40 cut off.

Instead, Gubbay and Dunlop went for singers with some acting ability (though, frankly, this was variable), an English language production and spoken dialogue between the arias - the plan being to draw in audiences of both opera and musical theatre for a 12-show run, the longest yet in the short history of arena opera.

By no means all the drama in this production has been on stage. Raymond Gubbay revealed to The Independent that the Royal Opera House tried to prevent the production from going on, wanting to stage their own Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall, and even casting some of the roles before winning the contract. Gubbay said: "The Royal Opera House tried to put pressure on us not to do Carmen. Nicholas Payne, head of the Royal Opera, came to see me and said they wanted to do Carmen there themselves another time. I found it a little distressing. A lot of our sacred idols don't want anybody to come in and rock the boat commercially. It's protectionism, and why should I kowtow to it? Singers' agents all over London have been phoning me up complaining that their clients had already been cast by the Royal Opera..."

Gubbay's victory has provided an affordable Carmen in a comfortable venue, albeit with an uneven production whose sexual theory was not matched by an equivalent sexual tension or sufficiently charged atmosphere on stage. Nevertheless it does leave the prospect of intensified competition between the big subsidised opera houses and the commercial impresarios.