breakfast at murrayfield

I still have the mother and father (rolled into one) of all hideous headaches, just didn’t feel like going anywhere last night (sorry, mates) so I eventually stayed at home, listening to the Carmen live broadcast from Teatro alla Scala.

I was only listening, though, so I know nothing about the staging, apart from what I could gather from a few pics (not much, to be fair), therefore I can only comment on the music. I absolutely loved Jonas Kaufmann’s Don Josè — which is amazing news as I usually don’t like tenors very much, and also because I don’t like that character, Don Josè just gets on my nerves, almost as much as Don Ottavio does in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, but Jonas’ voice made me change my mind. Kudos to him.

Anita Rachvelishvili (which surname I’ll never be able to write properly if not copying and pasting it from somewhere else, let alone pronouncing, sorry, I’m doofus) did well, too, considering she is quite young, basically a perfect debutant in a head role and on the prémiere night of the season opening of one of the most important opera houses. I would’ve been shaking like a leaf, but she managed to stay calm (and carry on) and deliver a nice portrayal of Carmen, so brava Anita!

I can never be completely non-partisan when it comes to Erwin Schrott, still I think his rendition of the Toreados song was a wee blemished. He probably was a little nervous (I reckon that also explains why he said “str0nz0” live on Radio 3 OK, he says he actually said “str0nzE”, addressing that to the chorus girls… anyway, I don’t know why radio people keep on annoying singers during intervals, when they’re still trying to concentrate and finish the show.). He got much better, though, as the opera went on in act III, so after all there’s not much to complain. Apart from the Sor Pampurio meets Mickey Mouse hat, that is (although that’s actually what a toreador hat looks like, so blame it on them.).

Daniel Barenboim’s conduction was a little on the slow side, but I enjoyed that — it was slower, but not less energetic.

Anyway, I’ll leave to others the duty of seriously reviewing the whole performance, it’s not my job (not anymore).

Though, as I was saying before, I still have a bad headache (in fact I’m about to go and find some paracetamol the minute after I click on “publish”, here), yet I can still say who’s who and who sang what in the opera.

So I suppose some Bernardino Zappa guy who writes reviews for some newspaper called l’Eco di Bergamo must be either suffering from a headache much worse than mine (in which case I really feel for him. Tachipirina 1000 can help you, dude.) or on heavy drugs or something, otherwise there’s no explanation for him writing that Erwin is a very famous German tenor, Jonas is a baritone who was absolutely perfect as Escamillo, especially in his rendition of Carmen’s song (he probably thinks she was the toreador whereas he was onstage selling cigars or something… hmm, that could be an idea for an even more non-traditional staging!), and Micaela was wonderful, too (apparently he’s the only person in the whole galaxy and beyond who thinks Adriana Damato sang anywhere near decently.).

Ah, well.

Whatever.

You can find an mp3 of our friend the Uru-chap singing the Toreador song on the homepage of the fansite. Also, if you ask me very kindly, maybe I could even send you a link to download the whole thing, go figure.