Calixto Bieito found the philosopher's stone for the operatic genre to make the leap into the 21st century when he devised the staging of Carmen commissioned by Peralada. It was 1999 and it was only his second work in opera. He had not yet lit up the audience at the Liceu with his Ballo in Maschera (the one with the toilets) nor had he raised Mozart to scandal with Don Giovanni and The Abduction from the Seraglio. There was a lot to do at the time when this intuitive and emotional creator shook the public in Peralada with a truthful staging that takes the myth out of its historical context to bring it down to the reality of sexist crime, without romanticism (or barely). .
The Liceu found it “sensational” – Joan Matabosch remembers – but was not able to put it on stage until 2010 due to the harsh criticism and the number of productions of Bieito that were planned. Finally, this production became his own, with which he would make a splash: the most watched Carmen in history, which, judging by what was seen last night at the premiere of this revival, remains in shape, in a sort of eternal contemporaneity, a mark of acting work. by Bieito.
With this in mind, a good number of high school students came to the theater yesterday who had already enjoyed the show – it has been seen in 30 theaters and there are currently seven kits spinning – and others willing to be impressed. But this time not because of the matter of the panties that Carmen takes off: not after having seen a dozen fly in L'incoronazione di Poppea.
In any case, seen in perspective... was it such a big deal when in 2010 some ladies in the audience wondered if their eyes had seen correctly? “Have you taken off your panties?”, she asked one of the other in the second act, when the mezzo seduces Don José on the hood of the famous rickety Mercedes. The summary of yesterday's premiere – which was attended by ministers, councilors and the French consul, Oliver Ramadour, and the director of the Institut Français de Barcelona, Valérie Nicolas – would be that the Rambla theater has been cured of the disease of horror. To the point that we didn't even miss Clementine Margaine taking off her underwear (it's optional).
Of course, the fascinating and morally depraved cigar-making gypsy that Mérimée's novel describes – and on which Bizet based himself at the end of his life – has nothing to do with the one embodied by Margaine, of marked ordinariness. Here Carmen is a woman of her time – late Franco or transitional Spain – in the border area of Ceuta and Morocco, in which the Lillas Pastia tavern is a beach bar and there is a Legion parade, an Osborne bull and some little guys who deal in tobacco, watches and televisions. And the men also have gestures from yesterday (and today): they know what to do with the whores who are too clever.
Alfons Flores signs the set design inspired by the reality of the Mercedes that cross the border loaded with refrigerators and televisions, and those Spanish flags that the production recovers after they had to be removed from the Teatro Real so that the blood would not reach the river of the very patriotic
The great revolution of Calixto, which maintains its strength in order, is the contrast between the dodgy scene of knife and transistor and the refined music of Bizet, full of mythical arias: “L'amour est un oiseau rebelle”, “La fleur que tu m'avais jétée”, “Je dis que rien ne m'epouvant”… Josep Pons dominated the Simfònica del Gran Teatre with diligence, and the choir included the Cor Infantil - Veus Amics de la Unió.
In the final seven minutes of applause, the audience turned to Guatemalan Adriana González's Micaela in addition to the main couple. But let us judge the criticism of tenor Michael Spyres (don José) and Simón Orfila's Escamillo, who made him suffer in the aria “Toreador, en garde!” It is a beautiful detail for the Liceu to dedicate all the functions to the memory of the co-founder of the Peralada Festival, Luis López Lamadrid.
