Slava Ukraini!: the cast, company and the Fairfield Halls audience were on their feet at the curtain call of Friday’s performance of Carmen by Opera International Kyiv

There were knife fights in central Croydon on Friday, but no teenagers were involved. KEN TOWL reviews Ellen Kent’s passionate production of Bizet’s  Carmen by Opera International Kyiv at the Fairfield Halls

Four years after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Fairfield Halls hosted an opera by a Frenchman about a murder in Seville in the south of Spain. These two events were connected by the fact that the cast of this production, and the orchestra, were Ukrainians.

Friday’s performance of Carmen featured Opera International Kyiv delivering popular, familiar arias like “Habanera”, “Seguidilla” and “Toreador”. The Observer has called this production “impassioned and sultry”, and of course it was. It is difficult for Carmen to be anything else.

It did not hurt that mezzo-soprano Maria Davydova was easily capable of meeting the demands of the title role, that the supporting cast were strong and free of any weak links, and that the musicians leaned into the percussive loudness and brassy brashness of Bizet’s most popular work.

Ellen Kent’s production evoked the earthy tones of Andalucia, contrasted by occasional flashes of primary colours. This was a consciously sensuous production, of a story laden with hints and metaphors. “Their passion and vows are nothing but smoke,” we hear of the cigarette girls from the tabacalera, and when Carmen sings, in “Habanera”, that “Love is a bird that cannot be tamed,” we start to get the message, that there will be no happy endings here, at least not the kind you find in fairy tales.

Spoiler alert: When Carmen dies, she dies bravely. She charges at the jealous Don Jose, the man who would possess her, as if she is a bull charging at her other lover, Don Escamillo, the toreador.

All of a sudden, the opera is over, but not the evening.

The final scene takes on an extra layer of meaning when the curtain call is over and the entire cast are on the stage and they unfurl the stark primary colours, the now-so-familiar yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag and the orchestra launches into Shche ne vmerla (Never Perished is Ukraine), and we in the audience, most of us surely unfamiliar with the tune but aided by the context and the surtitles “Our enemies shall perish like dew in the sunshine”, gradually work out that this is the Ukrainian national anthem. One-by-one and in groups and in couples, we stand and show solidarity with this country that, like Carmen, will be free and not possessed by anyone.

Occasionally, just occasionally, the great brutalist wannabe people’s palace that is the Fairfield Halls justifies its expensive existence. This was a moment to savour, a moment where great art met the real world and its weighty concerns, a moment when the sultry passion of opera was matched, and more, by the simple empathy of humanity.

More, please, Fairfield Halls, of this.

Read more: Dara Ó Briain is a BIG act. Fairfield Halls needs more like him

• Click here to visit the Fairfield Halls website and check out their forthcoming attractions

More by Ken Towl:

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• To read Ken Towl’s previous articles, his guided walks and visits to some of the area’s better pubs, as well as his arts and theatre reviews, click here

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