A Carmen foundering in a sea of confusion

It’s sometimes easy to forget, when theatrical productions cause outrage and shock, that such outrage has a long history. It’s also easy to make the mistake of imagining that a present-day audience is probably beyond shock.

Just taking London’s Royal Opera House as a single example, the last three years have seen outrage and upset at Rossini’s William Tell (a rape scene in a 2015 production), while Katie Mitchell’s 2016 production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor included a miscarriage on stage and was booed enough to be reported by a faux-scandalised general media.

Since the latter is, of it’s very nature, a dark and violent story, one wonders whether some of this outrage is not because some in an audience do not expect art to challenge them, but to perform a service of being comfortable.

Back in November, The Other Half and I saw Salome at the Staatsoper in Vienna. Written by Richard Strauss, it premiered in 1905 in Dresden, since the Vienna censor would not allow Gustav Mahler to stage it there (in London, it was banned by the Lord Chamberlain and only produced at Covent Garden in 1910 – on condition it did not show the Baptist’s severed head). For all that it relates a Biblical story, this psychologically dark work is completely a product of fin de siècle Vienna, where the art of the likes of Klimt and Schiele mixed with the beginnings of Freudian psychoanalysis and the late Romantic music of Strauss, Mahler and others to create a cauldron of revolutionary intellectual and cultural activity.

The Vienna production of this one-act work opens on a set that glows with a palette straight from Klimt, but is essentially a very traditional one. We thoroughly enjoyed it (Lise Lindstrom in the title role was particularly wonderful). And indeed, we enjoyed the piece itself so much that we leapt at the opportunity to see it again, at the Royal Opera House in late January.

Directed by David McVicar, with the excellent Malin Byström in the lead, this production originally saw the light of day in 2008. Influenced by Pasolini’s Saló – itself a version of Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom – it is set in the basement of a 1930s house, with evidence of debauchery and hints toward violence always evident and a design that clearly nods toward a pre-war Nazi Germany.

It has some really radical departures from tradition – not least in the Dance of the Seven Veils, which doesn’t see Salome’s flesh revealed, but moves through a series of rooms to reveal the sexual longings for her of Herod, her step father. 

And all of this against Strauss’s wonderful music. The entire London production is filled with danger: it is very, very clever, but it works and is very, very satisfying.

About a year ago, The Other Half and I made our first visit to an opera house outside the UK – to La Fenice in Venice, where we saw Carmen. This was Calixto Bieito’s 1999 version of Bizet’s work. The Catalan’s work is considered so shocking that, according to the LA Times, his “scandalous productions are regularly seen in Europe's major opera houses but are generally thought too risqué for American audiences”.

From our perspective, it was not difficult to see why it was controversial, but finding some YouTube footage from last year’s La Fenice run and watching it again today, we have found our conclusion remains the same: it was very good.

Yes, there are changes from Bizet’s original; yes, it has been set in the second half of the 20th century; yes, there’s a tiny bit of (male) nudity and there’s violence (how do you imagine Carmen without violence?) and yes, there’s lots of on-stage business.

But let’s fast forward to this year and the first staging at the Royal Opera House of Barrie Kosky’s 2016 Carmen.

Kosky has decided to stage it on a towering staircase that could be anything from sporting bleachers to a Ziegfeldian theatre set to an amphitheatre to a bull ring – whatever takes off in your own mind, really.

There’s potential here, but also the core of the problem: instead of directing for the audience, the director is directing only for himself and his own vision. Everything is open to whatever interpretation that each member of the audience puts on it, based on their individual responses, ideologies, prejudices, experiences and so forth.

The programme essays – ROH programmes are expensive by West End standards, but contain more serious content than any other programmes I’ve ever bought – reveal the influences behind the production as ranging from Brechtian alienation, through Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, Chicago and The Scottsboro Boys.

Into that mix, add in ‘bricolage’ – the incorporation of themes, references and ideas from popular culture. Or ‘cultural mash up’, as we might say if we were not so eager to make it sound intellectually posher than it might be. Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! did this well … in an original, deliberately playful work. T-shirts in my wardrobe that combine the minions with Doctor Who or The Big Bang Theory do it well too. Such mash-ups can be enormous fun. Indeed, the current TV incarnation of Doctor Who uses such an approach a lot – in something that is an ongoing original work that has been evolving down the decades.

In other words, these are not attempting to foist a new approach onto an established work. Or to be even more specific: are not attempting to foist a search for meaning onto a work that was never created with such a thing in mind.

Bieito’s Carmen maintained the heart of the piece: whatever he did with it, he did not try to make it something that it is not.

McVicar’s Salome does throw ideas into the mix – but this is a work that has always had philosophical and psychological depths to it, thus offering a greater opportunity for serious consideration.

Carmen is essentially a potboiler. What makes it so special is the music – but that’s true of a great deal of opera. As someone once commented to me, it’s the music that gives opera it’s great sense of emotional truth.

There are operas that offer a more philosophical and intellectually challenging basis for productions: perhaps exactly why Wagner has been subjected to some really barking interpretations.

But in some ways, rather that – and even rather this Kosky production – than lazy repetition and stagnation. Coming away from Covent Garden last night, the OH and I discussed at length why we didn’t like it and have continued the same dialogue today.

It’s important to note that Kosky is hardly alone in such a postmodern approach – and that the OH and I thoroughly enjoyed his production of Shostakovich’s The Nose at the ROH a couple of years ago; evidence that this approach can work … in the right circumstances.

Here, there are elements that do work: some of the pre-recorded voiceovers really add to the story (but other do not). Some of the costuming of Carmen is excellent – the initial matador costume manages to see her fully covered in clothing that traditionally male, yet utterly sexual. Think Dietrich making a top hat and tails look fabulously sexy.

French mezzo Gaëlle Arquez, as the eponymous femme fatale on the night we saw it, is a fabulous talent of whom I very much want to hear more.

The parameters set out by her opening recorded dialogue about Spanish words and ideas to describe the physically perfect woman make it clear why the make-up of much of the female chorus is the way it is.

Yet there is far, far too much ‘business’. In Bieito’s take, there is stage business – yet it all helps to establish what’s going on. Here, some of it simply business for the sake of business – and it distracts from the whole, while that set adds nothing obvious.

The choruses in Bizet’s work are important, but if they’re on stage so much, as here, it diminishes their impact.

What particular irked me – by the interval, it had become actively annoying – is the small troupe of dancers, who gurn and cavort, with stylistic nods to Bob Fosse, but add absolutely nothing that I can discern to the story or my ability to understand or interpret it.

Of course, I could suggest that life is a cabaret, old chum, and that their mugging simply emphasis that, but if the viewer has to search for any old reason to explain something, even when it adds nothing to the whole, then that is part of the problem. This production also blends the episodes in the three acts into something far less distinct than usual, with a result that is, in terms of the story, more confusing than one would wish for.

Radical and controversial can be inspired. But radical and controversial for the sake of see only disappointment and frustration looming large. And it is impossible to think that this production is anything but the latter.


ENO’s Tristan strikes the wrong chord (June 2016)

A Catalan Carmen casts off any staleness (March 2017)

A Catalan Carmen casts off any staleness

Back in 1999, Catalan stage director Calixto Bieito burst onto the global opera scene with a new production of Bizet’s smash hit, Carmen.

It caused controversy, but then again, when the opera was premiered in Paris in March 1875, it scandalised audiences, so why should anyone hope to see it made bland now?

Bizet died after the 33rd performance and, of course, could never know just what a hit it would become. But becoming a staple can dull too, while making it feel raw and alive and throbbing with the threat of violence takes a little more effort.

This production has been staged around the world in the years since, but has just landed at Teatro La Fenice in Venice for a revival season.

Which was most opportune. When The Other Half and I had begun to discuss the serious possibility of revisiting La Serenissima for a spring break, we had looked back at the hotel that we’d stayed in in 2010 – and realised that they organised opera trips.

It was instantly tempting – and not least as a quick look at Le Fenice’s website revealed that, when we were considering being there, Carmen would be playing.

But we didn’t yield straight away, continuing to look at other hotels and, indeed, contemplate booking on our own.

And this we eventually did. We’ve booked for concerts abroad before, in the Amsterdam and Berlin, and it helps that La Fenice has the option to view the site (and book) in English. It also, incidentally, does surtitles in both Italian and English.

For booking, a passport number was required, but that was the only ‘complexity’, other than finding a performance where we could still get two seats together.

But we managed – and for less than it would have cost us to do so as part of a hotel package.

So last Sunday, after a lovely lunch at Taverna La Fenice next door, we passed through the remarkably simple portals and into the legendary house where many of Verdi’s works first played.

After the arsonists’ fire that gutted it in 1996, it was painstakingly recreated, finally reopening in 2004. There were some complaints about the decision to so carefully replicate the previous building, but from my perspective, it looks simply ravishing. Blingly – but ravishing.

The view from our seats

And so to the opera, which wasn’t blingy, but has moments of being musically ravishing.

Bieito has updated in such a way as to suggest it’s set sometime from the 1950s to the here and now. The military uniforms, therefore, are simple, rather than fancy.

The sets are pared right back, which allows the piece to speak for itself, while removing most of the spoken dialogue – the reason it’s classed as an opéra comique – means that Bieito has also tightened it. And you lose nothing.

Here we have smugglers smuggling iconic 21st century brands in their cars – consumer goods to brighten the drab lives of the people, just as their hero worship of the glamorous matador Escamillo does.

The silhouette of a vast toro towers over the stage during the third act, bringing to mind themes of masculinity (and, arguably indeed, national identity – very Catalan) and then, as the prelude plays, a single man appears on stage, undresses and performs a stylised dance hinting at matadors and echoing that same theme.

The lighting is soft, so the nudity is not clear, but it certainly drew some sharp intakes of breath (fellow visitors from the UK or, perhaps, the similarly puritanical US?). Personally, I thought it added something to a point in the opera that would, otherwise, simply have been a musical interlude to allow set changes.

The big hits – the Habanera and the Toreador Song – are simply wonderful. The latter in particular was spine tingling, as the chorus strained against a rope strung across the front of the proscenium.

Of the cast, I thought that, while Roberto Aronica sung well as Don José, his acting was a little flat. Veronica Simeoni, on the other hand, is a superb Carmen – great voice and a performance that really had a believable sense of the wild free spirit of the character.

Michëla is a thankless role in some ways, but Ekaterina Bakanova gave her as much guts as possible and sung delightfully, while Vito Pirante was a very enjoyable and deceptively light Escamillo.

But watch out for Simeoni – a young singer who really impresses and seems able to take realism in opera acting to new heights.

The chorus was excellent throughout – as was the house orchestra under the baton of Myung-Whun Chung.

All in all, it would have been difficult to spend a Sunday afternoon in a more thoroughly enjoyable manner.

And the lesson is – don’t buy into organised trips without first seeing if you cannot book for yourself.

• Production photos not from this revival at La Fenice.

• www.teatrolafenice.it

Venetian food sets the senses alight

Fegato – liver and onions, Venetian style

Were you to ask most people in the UK to name an Italian food, it’s a fairly safe bet that spaghetti bolognese might be mentioned, along with pizza, pasta in general, panettone and ice cream.

Setting aside the point that the Bolognese would eat their classic ragu with tagliatelle and not spaghetti, some might be able to get a little regional, knowing that, for instance, it was Napoli that gave birth to the pizza.

But what of Venice and the Veneto? Many would be stumped, although it’s most famous dish outside Italy is almost certainly tiramisu – and when made properly, it comes without any alcohol.

On this matter, The Other Half approves, even though the presence of mascarpone in the ingredient list means he hasn’t ever tried it. Then again, while I don’t mind a dash of sweet sherry in a trifle, he disapproves of that too. I wonder if this is a sign of a Yorkshireman considering booze in a pudding as an unnecessarily spendthrift act?

But let’s set that aside for the present – although Yorkshire will make an appearance later.

When we first visited La Serenissima seven years ago, brief homework beforehand had meant that we knew about tiramisu, together with a few other local delicacies. Early spring is wonderful for many reasons, but it is not the time to expect rise e bisi – the iconic Venetian pea risotto.

It is, however, just in time for the very end of the radicchio season. Grown on the mainland around Treviso, this bitter, red and white leaf, is a regional speciality.

Tiramisu at the Peggy Guggenheim

As with most anywhere else, the key to finding the best food is finding where local people eat. By and large, that means avoiding anywhere declaring itself a ‘restaurant’. As an acquaintance insisted before the trip: look for trattorias.

On our first night, this led us to Ai Cugnai, around the corner from where we were staying on Dorsoduro. There, surrounded by locals – at least some of whom we suspected worked at the nearby university – we began our culinary trip in an old establishment that has clearly been in one family for many years, and is currently headed by the son, with the father now taking it easier by helping wait on tables.

In a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, we both began with a vegetable soup. Nothing complex, but perfectly cooked vegetables in a tasty broth.

Next up for me, an absolute classic of local cuisine: fegato – liver and onions, with polenta on the side. Again, this was not complex food, but good ingredients cooked well.

The following day, as the sun blazed down on us, we lunched al fresco at the cafe inside the Peggy Guggenheim museum – delightful confit salmon for me, with seasonal veg and a cream that had been ‘soured’ with lemon (as opposed to being yer actual bought ‘sour cream’), plus an excellent tiramisu. With no alcohol.

All the culture vulturey can be quite tiring. That evening, we crossed the Ponte dell’Accademia and, thanks to the excellent memory of The Other Half, found once more a place that we had enjoyed back on the first visit in 2010 and where I’d first experienced fegato.

Lunchtime calamari

Trattoria da Fiore was busy, but the staff managed to find us a table – next to a couple from Harrogate. In late middle age, they were quiet, but we were so close it was impossible not to hear to comments about how wonderful are the gardens at Prince Charles’s Highgrove home.

When the wife – who was only inches away from me – ordered fritti misti (fried fish and sea food) she appeared confident of what she was getting.

Except for one small detail: she clearly believed it was a version of goujons, complete with dipping sauce. The absence of any such sauce left her, after a short while, close to despair.

“It’s very dry,” she murmured in a drawl that was atremble with innate sadness.

They called the waiter.

“Do you not have any tartare sauce or may-o-nnaise?” she asked, her mournful voice bursting with the suggestion that there was not a culinary establishment on Earth worthy of the name that would not, at the very least, have these in tear-open sachets.

The young man explained, in excellent English and entirely patiently, that this was the way the dish was an no, they didn’t have such condiments in the building. He left.

A moment or so later: “I’m sure he could have found something,” she intoned wearily.

I was biting my tongue, trying desperately not to burst out into hysterical laughter, and with a memory unfolding in my head of Catherine Tate’s ‘disgusted couple’ sketches.

Later, albeit without this as my intent, I restored some dignity to us Brits in a conversation with the maître d’. He had come to check whether our meal was fine. I responded with asking whether the radicchio in my pasta dish was from Treviso and wasn’t the season over yet? All this enthusiastically, I should add.

The Other Half says that his expression suggested that he was genuinely impressed.

Rather earlier, our young waiter had come around carrying a platter of the fresh fish and seafood the place had that night. There was no smell – in other words, this was as fresh as you can get. I picked two shellless crabs for my starter.

Superb guinea fowl at La Bitte

I’d never had them before – genuinely doubted whether they were really shell less (and then how do you eat them etc). But oh my, they were lovely. Sweet – but not the overpowering sweetness of much British crab meat. They came with a little polenta, some of that Treviso radicchio – a perfect counterbalance to the sweetness – and some lettuce.

And I enjoyed – very much so – a big, bold pasta dish of mushrooms, gorgonzola, walnuts and radicchio for my main.

The following day, after long wandering, we had a basic lunch. But though we expected little, it was perfectly decent. I enjoyed a large plate of calamari, with lemon. Done right, what else do you need?

That evening, we pulled big time in culinary terms.

Thanks to top food journalist Joanna Blythman, we knew to try to get into La Bitte, which was only about a 10-minute walk away from the hotel where we were staying.

It has no website booking facility, but our hotel rang up for us and did the business. We were in.

La Bitte is small and rustic and intimate. It is dedicated to the meaty food of the mainland Veneto rather than the fish of the lagoons.

And oh my god – it is a joy.

We both started with a smoked carpaccio of beef: plenty of it; delicate beyond belief and sitting atop a pillow of fresh, tasty salad leaves – all dressed in Balsamico. If it sounds simple, well then yes – it was. But how many places get such apparent ‘simplicity’ so right?

For me, I followed that with guinea fowl.

Good grief – half a bird, tender as anything yet falling off the bone, served with a velvet-smooth cream sauce. How the hell can that be done? It’s a culinary contradiction! For the meat to flake, it needs long-slow cooking, yet doing that will render it tough and dry.

I asked.

Apparently, the game is cooked long and slow. In cream, together with pancetta and sage.

So when the meat is lifted out and some of the cream sauce strained, it’s flaking and yet moist.

Served with quenelles of Jerusalem artichoke, this was utterly stunning. I’ve been to posh places in London that cannot come close to this. It was simply glorious.

Ravioli at  Taverna La Fenice

Maintaining an almost dangerously rich note, I ended with a vanilla panna cotta – impossibly light yet rich, and with a caramel sauce that had the authenticity of length, with just the suggestion of burnt toast at the end.

Stunning – simply stunning.

Over the rest of the visit, we returned to Ai Cugnai (where I sampled sarde soar – in effect, sardines done in a way similar to rollmops) and enjoyed a really fine pre-opera lunch at Taverna la Fenice, which managed to combine posh with local, seasonal quality.

There, we enjoyed there first asparagus of the year in simple crudités, with virgin oil and mustard – and I had an excellent dish of white meat ravioli with a gusty gravy (you can’t call it a ‘sauce’) and slivers of truffle.

One of our other discoveries this trip was the wine: forget the piss poor excuse for a pinot grigio or soave that you are likely to be served in UK hotels, the real deal is excellent.

Venice is a joy for many reasons. But this was the visit that helped us really appreciate just a few of the ways in which it can tantalise the tastebuds.

Just promise me that you won’t ask for any tartare sauce.

Remember to love your local market

Radishes, Paris style.

With The Other Half away for the weekend, following his beloved Castleford Tigers to Perpignan for their league game against the Catalan Dragons – an act of great personal sacrifice on his part – the opportunity presented itself for personal culinary indulgence.

And with a few days to eat nothing but exactly what I want, a Friday evening visit to Borough Market was the perfect way to get the weekend up and running.

This itself seemed apt, coming as it did just days into Love Your Local Market Fortnight: a time to promote real food and real producers; food that looks and tastes like proper food, and is sold by people, often, who produce it themselves, and certainly care about it.

Given The Other Half's tastes, the menus for such a weekend are easy: seafood and offal. Although not together. Obviously.

It started, on Friday evening, with scallops, pan fried briefly, with canellini beans, chili and lamb's lettuce. River Café Two Easy is the bible for these weekends.

Other purchases included asparagus, plum tomatoes, Jersey Royals and the first English strawberries of the year.

Borough was busy with, as ever, a combination of tourists and bright young things enjoying the start of the weekend.

The market prides itself – and rightly so – on being twinned with the legendary La Boqueria in Barcelona. The tragedy is that the London prices mitigate against everyone being able to use it. In that wonderful market off La Rambla, you'll see little old ladies carefully picking out produce. Not here, sadly.

Where good food in many parts of the Continent is available to all and considered a birthright, there is much more of a class divide in the UK, as with so much else.

Much the same can be said of Broadway Market, although not to quite the same extent: I know that I'm not the only local who shops there, although first thing on a Saturday morning, I'm always convinced that half the 'hipsters' sitting outside cafes with coffee have come straight from Hoxton nightspots with nary an encounter with sleep.

And on Saturday morning, it was straight to Matthew to see what offal he had, with a lovely piece of lamb's liver, thinly sliced, going into the bag.

Next up, fish.

Unfortunately, Vicki had nothing that I wanted, so Fin & Founder had to do the business. I bought a Dover sole and a squid.

"Shall I fillet it?" said the young man of the sole. I demurred. He seemed surprised and offered to at least trim the fins. I demurred again. He almost begged to be allowed to rinse it. I allowed him to do so.

My refusal to let him do anything with the squid appeared even more shocking. "It can make a mess," he offered rather lamely.

"Oh not if you do it properly," I returned, adding that I enjoy doing it - and that it's easy. I left with squid and sole intact in the face of someone who appeared to have the love of knife work that would have delighted a mohel.

Selection vegetables in Barcelona.

I understand that this is part and parcel of the Fin and Founder routine; that it's their way of 'adding value' (and thus helping justify their prices).

And of course there's also an expectation that many customers will lack the skills to prep fish.
Requiring no cutting at all, I also bought a handful of the season's first samphire.

Back at Mark's Ash Green Organics, which is increasingly becoming my go-to greengrocer, fine beans, a courgette, oranges and rhubarb were added to the mix.

The simplicity of approach continued with Saturday lunch. Jerseys were scraped and boiled, to be served with briefly boiled asparagus (four minutes – they were quite thick), and four slices of the liver, pan fried in a very little olive oil.

A 'gravy' was made by melting a teaspoon of redcurrant jelly into the meat juices while it briefly rested.

The only other things required are salt, pepper and good butter.

For evening, it was back to River Café and a recipe I'd tried before.

Take your squid, clean it and thinly slice.

Then take a courgette and cut it into matchsticks.

Octopus in Venice.

Previously, I'd made the mistake of grating the squash far too finely and it all but disappeared. This time, I just used a razor-sharp paring knife and cut it up that way. Salt these for about 15 minutes, then rinse and dry.

This is a very, very quick cook, so it's best to be a bit cheffy and prep all the ingredients first.

Thinly slice as much chili as takes your fancy. Thinly slice a clove of garlic. Juice and zest some lemon.

Get a pan good and hot, add a generous splash of olive oil and, when it's really hot, pop in the squid.

Stir briefly and then add the chili and a grind or two of black pepper.

Stir again, give it all a couple of minutes, then add the courgette and the garlic. Let it cook through – it doesn't take long – and add the lemon. Stir once, twice – and it's ready to serve.

The original recipe serves this with spaghetti, but I opted instead for some good, fresh baguette. It needs little or no added salt.

And it is a feast.

Sunday went a bit off piste in terms of plans, so I saved the sole for Monday and managed, incredibly, to do the best filleting job I've ever managed (it was quite large) and then grill the fillets and serve them with Jerseys and asparagus and fine beans to welcome home The Other Half.

Good food should be a birthright for all of us. And good markets, where you can get good, seasonal produce, should be available for everyone.

Fortunately, many places do still have them – and they're not the rather 'posh' ones like Borough or even Broadway.

Tomatoes in Collioure – I dream of them.

So make sure you love your own local market – you know it's worth it.

And now a tiny 'fession.

Earlier in this piece, I mentioned tourists at Borough. Well, I like to photograph markets too – both at home and abroad.

Markets are wonderful places. So instead of a couple of shots of liver or scallops on a plate, I decided to illustrate this piece with a very few, varied shots.

I hope you enjoy.

And perhaps more to the point – enjoy your own local markets.