Carmen with ketchup

CARMEN, Lowry, Salford

WELL it’s all change on the plains in Spain. For one thing this Carmen seems to have more in common with the US mid-west setting of Matthew Bourne’s “Car Man” than Bizet’s Seville.

And that’s without the occasionally bizarre trappings that come with it: the ketchup Escamillo and a groupie smear over themselves (in simulation of blood, you understand); the change of sport from bullfighting (well done, director Daniel Kramer, for your condemnation of that barbaric sport) to, er, dog fighting (oh...); the general sexual groping of the supposedly 17-year-old Michaela — by the police; the Michael Jackson wannabe dancing on the roof of the bar, and lots, and lots, of underwear...

Opera North’s professed aim was to put the sex back into Carmen and to an extent it succeeds, though for the most part the result is rather uninvolving; yes, even when Carmen — Heather Shipp, not on top form due to a continuing cold — whips her top off.

And there’s a slight problem with the Don Jose of Peter Auty, too; he sings well throughout, but his slightly chubby cheeks and curly hair don’t exude sexiness — more boy scout: “I’m waiting for my mum to collect me, thanks; pop your top back on, Carmen love...”

But he does convince later as a man obsessed with the less flighty than usual, more desperate to escape, cigarette factory girl.

All the big songs are in the first two acts, and as usual the Opera North orchestra (last night under assistant conductor Alexander Ingram) and chorus do a great job in support.

Kramer has thus cut chunks of the third and fourth acts to streamline the action and concentrate on the disintegrating affair between Don Jose and Carmen and the growing affair of Carmen and Escamillo (suitably sexy of voice in the form of Kostas Smoriginas), resulting in Carmen’s murder at the dog fights. Both these acts are positively stripped down compared with the first two, and all the better for it.

The only mistake seems to have been to make the usually virginal Michaela (Anne Sophie Dupreis) a big-haired, over-made-up glamour girl on the verge of madness.

And when all is said and done, lets face it Carmen is patently NOT a sexy opera: the story might be, but it is lumbered with what, in the 19th century, passed for sensual music. These days, a tea party with the vicar would be sexier. Just not as tuneful.