Immediately after the extraordinary success of “Les Troyens (The Trojans)“, the masterpiece by Hector Berlioz in which Roberto Alagna stood out as Aeneas, the Deutsche Oper Berlin offered a second work with Alagna: Carmen. The first performance was held on10th April 2014.
A show of quality, which allowed the two main solists to share the stage again and triumph together, the great tenor as Don José andBéatrice Uria-Monzon as Carmen. The two artists have already met on several occasions asCarmen and Don José: they are two partners who know each other very well, who share a great complicity and appear in perfect harmony both as singers and actors. This gives rise to a certainly unequaled emotion: their interpretation of Bizet’s opera was magical. Both demonstrated such a stage presence and involvement that emotion ran high from the beginning to the end. Their passionate commitment never impaired their vocal performance.
Carmen by Béatrice Uria-Monzon is graceful and elegant, never vulgar, but more suffering and less brazen than by other performers. She perfectly met the vocal requirements as desired by Bizet, while providing a very personal reading of her singing at the same time.
In a great vocal shape, Roberto Alagna, as always, completely merged in his character, one of his favorite roles he said: expressiveness, vocal technique, perfect diction and phrasing, an always colorful and splendid timbre in top notes and a role where he sounds really good. His capacity to constantly produce nuances both in singing and playing is a rich source of expressiveness. The famous tenor portrayed a vulnerable and defeated Don José, but at the same time violent, which is something that is rarely emphasized: whoever is able to kill, as it happens in the final scene of the opera, must necessarily be predisposed to do so. It is perceptible in his behavior from the beginning, since Carmenmade this dark side of his personality come out.
And with the great Roberto, staged by Soren Schumacher, this predisposition appears with a great supremacy. His portraying is sometimes very intense, as relevant and specifically thought, than credible and realistic, to which Carmen naturally and accurately responds, causing a thrilling emotion… Given the similarities between the two characters of Don José and Otello, this is not without giving us a promising foretaste of the performance that the brilliant French-Sicilian artist plans to give as theMoorish Verdi’s character (in August, at the ‘Chorégies d’Orange’). We are looking forward to hearing and seeing it.
Among the other singers and DOB Chorus, all of whom have proven their value, a special mention should be given to the delicious Elena Tsallagova, a young talented Micaela. Over time and experience, she will certainly be able to give a greater depth to her interpretation, better demonstrating the sweetness of her character.
The excellent work of Maestro Giuseppe Finzi conducting the DOB Orchestraproved to be quite relevant. He retained control of a long and difficult score which, because of its specific features, may tend to erode or become dangerously noisy, to the detriment of the sound’s quality and especially of the orchestral color.
A gorgeous success and a touching roar of applause, particularly when the singers came out at the first curtain call, obviously still marked by the emotion of their final scene, as we can imagine.
