Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen
Renaud Machart, the very trustworthy musical critic of Le Monde, was yesterday evening attending the performance of Carmen at La Scala for journalists and under-30 audiences (read: the general rehearsal opened to the public).
He is definitely not happy.
The French diction ranges from mediocre to unbearable, he says, and the cast is overall pretty weak (he especially has tough critics for Erwin Schrott (Escamillo) and Adriana Damato (Micaëla). But he's forgiving with young Riccardo Massi (Don José) that had to step in yesterday when Kaufmann cancelled, supposedly to keep his strength for the real prima on Dec.7.
Machart is not kind also for both Barenboim - uneven and therefore having a bad understanding of the score (with sometimes a feel of Wagner to the music, that Machart dismisses as heresy).
And finally, Machart has also some criticisms for director Emma Dante - and is left wandering whether she was eaten by tradition or managed to play with it.
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3 comments:
Finally Machart was right. This was not the best Carmen and certainly it was one of the worst galas in La Scala.
Cheap but not chic operas that diminish the audience's interest in further performances in the legandary theatre.
I was there on 4 December for the Anteprima reserved to Young People (by the way, please don't "read this as a general rehearsal opened to the public", because as far as I know the dress rehearsal had taken place a few days earlier...).
I might not be as knowlegeable as Machart on opera, but I did enjoy the performance a lot (and it's not every day that you get the opportunity to go to the opera for 10euro). As a French-speaking expat in Milan, I find it really surprising that Machart had to cast such a bad judgment on the French diction - I found it perfectly acceptable...
Emma Dante's vision of Carmen is very dynamic and I really liked Anita Rachvelishvili. The only minus note of the evening was Kaufmann's substitution...
Have you watched Arte's retransmission?
Not yet... but soon...
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