Bizet´s Carmen on stage of the J.K.Tyl Theater in Pilsen

Hudební rozhledy, Marta Ulrychová, May 2020

Though the Plzeň production´s standard cast features three alternative singers for the roles of Carmen and another three for Micaela, this time both parts had to be shouldered by guest artists. Mezzo-soprano Barbora de Nunes-Cambraia already has to her credit several previous creations on the Plzeň stage (quite recently for instance Idamante in Mozart´s Idomeneo); her stand-in appearance in Carmen, however, offered us the chance to get to know her dealing with a thoroughly different interpretational task. The young promising artist, endowed with a flawlessly disciplined, cultured mezzo-soprano voice whose sonic potential is evenly distributed all across its range, does not present in this Bizet opera an impersonation of the title character as an instinct-driven, intrinsically passionate woman, a reading embraced by more than a few singers (quite often needlessly), and by now virtually a cliché; much rather, she has approached the role of Carmen on her own terms. Evidently well acquainted with the traditional singing idioms of Andalusia, she took care in the “dance” solo numbers (habanera, seguidilla) to focus her singing on the music´s ornamentation, inherited from Middle Eastern microinterval structures, achieving a rendition which her technical prowess embued with a sense of natural ease and intonational clarity. Her Carmen toys with men with an air of coquettish frivolousness much rather than embodying a yearning, unfulfilled desire. Interestingly moreover, the young singer managed a remarkable shift away from this approach in the “card game” aria, a premonition of death to which her rendition added the unavoidable tragic hue.