<<  -- 7 --  Roderic Dunnett    A SUREFIRE HIT

But this was Fontane's evening. We meet Carmen before the opera starts, and long before she emerges from the factory, hovering onstage bathed in red, like Medea before the kill, or as if the hungry Furies have already begun gathering. When she finally emerges from work, she ignores us completely, still engaged in some undefined exchange with someone inside, as if to underline the unseen offstage forces, the dark gods -- baleful chance and inevitable mishap -- that haunt this opera. As if to taunt the men, she dances with Frasquita and Mercedes almost lecherously -- like some overtly sexual, or at least sensual, women's coven at which profane outsiders can only guess. She's overdone the leg make-up, overegging a tan (one of only three visual errors Fontane made; the others were one set of less than well mapped-out, meaningless criss-cross moves for herself and José and -- props department playing too safe, perhaps? -- the evidently empty bottles from which everyone was pointlessly 'drinking' -- or rather, visibly failing to imbibe -- assorted liquors).

Defiance she had in abundance -- rendering her disdainful tralala to a trilliping, nicely metallic-sounding flute. José is denied, repeatedly till late on, the longed for kiss on the lips; rather, once uncuffed, she draws the key across his unprotected crotch like a dismissive fingernail. He is, after all -- though he can't see it -- just one more of her catches. When in the bar scene she emerges from her self-imposed isolation, her slink and swagger is so perfect you'd think she could play Escamillo. Her dance in front of the 'jealous' José, kept by Secret to a wonderful pianissimo as she tap-taps on her silver salver, dances on the table now stripped to her negligee, and massages him above and below with her in filmy apricot, was mesmerising.

Yet what Carmen needs from José is precisely his quasi-marital violence. She needs to be slapped: it answers to some deep seated yen within her that squares with a need -- for the first time -- to be ruled. His declaration of love both allures and appals her -- witness her mad, big, puzzled eyes. Fontane absolutely is a Carmen, and the strength of her vocal delivery is that it's never full-pelt: she seems to have so much in reserve. Wrapped around by the re-emerging cello 'fate' theme (from the overture and the card game), she sounds overawing -- potentially a great voice, with faint shades of Josephine Veasey as Dido at her most pained, or an anguished Agnes Baltsa. She can do the low notes wonderfully ('La mort'). Indeed, La mort is what she finally walks into, has been walking towards all these years; and la mort claims its due rewards. A terrific performance from Fontane, and a surefire hit for Robert Secret's Stowe.