Carmen

This is not the showy Gale Edwards on-harbour production of last year, it’s a revival of the Sydney Opera House 2008 production which, the program declares, is based on a Covent Garden and Norwegian National Opera co-production of 2006.

You can see why they continue to revive it: it’s absolutely huge and they’re probably still recouping the upfront costs. The costume budget alone must have been enormous. I speed-count over 90 on stage during packed crowd scenes — including chorus, dancers, a 14-strong children’s chorus and a horse. The famously inadequate wing space must be crammed. And there are 59 players in the pit.

Fortunately for the Opera House budgets, there’s no sign that Sydney audiences are losing interest in Bizet’s astonishing melodies and lush orchestrations. A packed house roared its approval back to the packed stage.

Musically, the work is untouchable, and conductor Anthony Walker is clearly having a terrific time with his expanded orchestra, while the cast (and director Zambello at some remove) fight gamely to keep ever-encroaching melodrama at bay.

Nancy Fabiola Herrera, though looking a little matronly as the doomed, freedom-loving gypsy girl, sings up a storm: she dances and plays the castanets, too. Michael Honeyman is a surprisingly bantam-weight ace bullfighter, singing the famous ‘Toreador Song’ from the saddle of a white horse, whose onstage droppings in no way reflected the opinion of the house. An expertly wielded dustpan and brush whisked away the evidence before the onstage crowd dispersed.

Show stopper of the evening is tenor Dmytro Popov as tortured, love-struck Don José. His passionate Act 2 solo touches the heart.

Frank Hatherley

Image: Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Carmen & the Opera Australia Chorus and Michael Honeyman as Escamillo. Photoographer: Branco Gaica.