Catharine Rogers is intensely commanding singing the huge title role in George Lloyd's first opera Iernin, a Cornish legend of a fairy doomed by love of a man, who turns to stone rather than live in a world of hate. With her very own elfin Lord of the Rings hair, Catharine Rogers is compellingly fairy-like and particularly thrilling in her mad scene. Written by a young man barely out of his teens, Iernin is a sumptuous opera from the inter war years inspired by Verdi and Donizetti, with a dramatic film score sweep, haunting melodies and rich colourful orchestrations vividly performed by Surrey Opera soloists and chorus conducted by Jonathan Butcher and directed by Alexander Hargreaves. Its first staging since its premiere in 1934, it is a rare opportunity to experience this very English grand opera. Trinity School Theatre, Croydon, Surrey CR9 7AT, Thurs 24 - Sat 26 October, and on 1 & 2 November, St John’s Hall, Penzance, Cornwall TR18 2QR.
http://www.surreyopera.org

20 images below photographed by MC

Calixto Bieito’s last production at ENO was Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni had a cock to kill a horse. Before that it was Verdi’s A Masked Ball. It opened with a row of chorus men in black suits, trousers down, sitting reading newspapers on the lavatory. Now comes his Carmen, a cat-in-heat thigh-spreading blonde, oozing sex, yes a blonde – “You can’t have a Carmen who doesn’t have black hair” shouted one old gentleman at another on the first night. But women in Spain today dye their hair blonde, and Bieito has pulled his world famous Carmen production, which won him the Italian Association of Music Critics Award last year, right out of any pretty 19^th century stage Spanishness into a robust rough 1980s poverty stricken post-Franco Spain of testosterone fuelled soldiers, bovine hunks and gangland criminals. Carmen has sex on cars, sex on the beach, and sex tied to a flagpole as she works her seductive skills on her soldier captor José and escapes. Knives flash among battered vintage Mercedes (with Spanish number plates and left hand drive!) which almost steal the show when they appear. Their headlights pierce a predawn mist to frighten away a naked toreador practising his moves under the towering black silhouette of a billboard bull, as they roll onto the stage with their roofs piled high with contraband, iMacs & all, to gather in a ring in a stirringly beautiful stage image. True to Mérimée’s novel, Bizet’s Carmen incites lusts, passions and jealousies to such a murderous degree that the frenzy climaxes with her own blood being spilt on the sand by her maddened rejected lover José at the very moment the crowd in the bullring is heard applauding her new lover the Toreador for bringing down the bull. With Bieito’s Carmen you step into the bullring of life through a director who understands the brutalities of the world. It’s a Francis Bacon bullring of passion and pain played out in a painted white circle on a bare stage of trodden sand, strong atmospheric set design by Alfons Flores. Cars, sex, violence, brutality, love, lust and death is the Hollywood film industry recipe for success. This has it all except you see it live, plus every tune is a hit. The singing and acting is superb, the cast led by Ruxandra Donose (Carmen), Adam Diegel (José), Elizabeth Llewellyn (an outstanding Micaela), & Leigh Melrose (Escamillo the bullfighter). The ENO chorus surpasses itself jumping and singing with gusto while Ryan Wigglesworth is like a young Solti in the pit achieving terrific intensity, attack and momentum, but also revels in all the subtle nuances of Bizet’s ever changing play of mood. It was like he took a bullwhip to the orchestra the way it sprang to life with an Overture of sizzling excitement and drive. No chance of the Coliseum becoming a bedroom with this Carmen!