Carmen
Dates Playing: 3/14/2009 - 3/14/2009
Some Spanish heat and passion to provide the antidote to a cold Winter
Bizet’s Carmen is one of those rare operas in which every number seems to be a familiar favourite melody. It is jam-packed with sexy solos, rousing choruses, impassioned arias and Spanish dances. Tuneful, colourful, evocative, dramatic... The seemingly endless list of adjectives Carmen regularly invites explains just why this has remained one of the most popular works in the opera repertory since it first appeared on the Paris stage in 1875.
The Spanish heat and gypsy passion of Carmen comes to life in Francesca Zambello's production recreating the sun-drenched and sensual world of 19th-century Spain, with its ranks of soldiers and crowds of peasants, its gypsies and bullfighters, its spectacle and its deadly, white-hot emotions. The young star cast is headed by Music Director Antonio Pappano. At the heart of the story of one woman's tangled relationship with two men is Carmen herself, played by the fabulous singer-actor Anna Caterina Antonacci. The great Italian soprano is matched by two devilishly handsome men as her love interest; steamingly sexy German tenor, Jonas Kaufmann and the smouldering Italian baritone Ildebrando D'Arcangelo.
"Covent Garden's new Carmen has it all: bondage, cleavage, animals, acrobats, children and a tenor to die for (which our gypsy heroine does). The staging for all its traditional elements is physical and sexy." – Fiona Maddocks, Evening Standard
"From abseiling bandits to a hero on horseback, this full-blooded Carmen is intoxicating!" - Anthony Holden, The Guardian
