Cinderella, Carmen, Hamlet, and others

I.

For London opera, this is becoming an autumn of women conductors: at Covent Garden, Speranza Scapucci for “The Sicilian Vespers” and Marie Jacquot for “The Magic Flute”; for English National Opera at the Coliseum, Yi-Chen Lin for Rossini’s “Cinderella” and Clelia Cafiero for “Carmen”. The first of these, the tepidly oompah Sperucci, has been the most disappointing so far. The other three may promise more: I have yet to hear the Covent Garden “Flute”, but Yi-Chen Lin and Cafiero have made pleasant first impressions in Rossini and Bizet. Let’s see, or rather hear, what the future brings from them with less familiar scores.

At the “Coli” (Coliseum), a new mood is anyway in the air, where, next week, English National Opera presents three different operas on consecutive nights: Benjamin Britten’s “Albert Herring” opens on Monday 13; both Rossini’s “Cinderella” (“Cenerentola”) and Bizet’s “Carmen” have already opened, in vivid modern-dress productions. This sense of overlapping repertory was how many of us remember English National Opera in the 1970s and 1980s, a period when, under such conductors as Charles Mackerras and Reginald Goodall, it often attained world-class musical standards. It also had the reputation for often presenting the finest theatre in London. 

The English National Opera of autumn 2025 is not yet of world-class musical standards, but in “Cinderella” and “Carmen” it certainly has vividly sung productions that you want your friends to see as riveting theatre. 

Christopher Cowell’s new translation of “Cinderella”, Rossini’s most lovable opera; has a laugh-out-loud immediacy. Julia Burbach’s direction and costume designer Sussie Juhlin-Wallen have fun in dressing - very quaintly - Rossini’s all-male courtiers as members of both sexes. (This is a delicious reverse of Willy Decker’s production of “La Traviata”, where all the chorus - singers of both sexes - are dressed as men who frequent the demi-monde.) And these choral characters, though physically mobile, are all framed like paintings, along the lines of the portraits in the “Harry Potter” corridors and staircases except that they carry their frames as they move. (The physical comedy grows as these characters walk across the stage while facing front.) 

The Prince (Aaron Godfrey Mayes) is a geek who wears specs, his valet Dandini (Charles Rice) is a far more socially imposing young man, and Isabelle Peters and Grace Durham are aggressively fashionable as Clorinda and Tisbe. Though Deepa Johnny was already an attractive young woman in the kitchen, the effect she made in the ballroom - wearing a beautifully cut, off-the-shoulder, light blue, billowing ballgown - was ideal, not too showy for her character and yet spectacular. 

The ENO “Carmen”, originally directed by Calixto Bieito in 2012, has been revived this time by Jamie Manton; Cowell, again, is responsible for the vivid, free, and singable translation. Carmen emerges from a phone booth; Acts II and III are set in car parks; Carmen removes her pants to have proper sex with José. Unlike the Royal Opera’s 2024 production of “Carmen”, there are no surprise repeats or extra bits: this is the standard text of “Carmen”, which works to marvellous effect. 

In her role debut as Carmen, the blonde Niamh O’Sullivan is both direct and elusive, modern, funny, gorgeous, and classless. Her voice, in a nice self-contradiction, sounds both smoky and luminous; her singing seems effortless. John Findon isn’t physically in her league: the moment that she singles him out, he is in her thrall. The acting between them is so strongly detailed that you can spend some time working out when she transfers her affections from him to Escamillo - it may well be halfway through Act Two. As coherent music drama, this is the strongest “Carmen” I have seen this century. 

•   II.

How much do you long to see a Handel opera whose plot ends like this? I quote from Wikipedia: 

“Back at the palace, Amanzio has defeated Anastasio and placed himself on the throne. Anastasio, Arianna and Princess Leocasta are in chains but Giustino rushes in, defeats Amanzio and sends him off to be executed. Anastasio is restored to the throne with his wife, begging her pardon for having doubted her fidelity, and Giustino pleads for the now repentant Vitaliano to be forgiven. Anastasio grants this request and gives Giustino the hand of his sister Leocasta in marriage. All celebrate such a happy turn of events.”

Yes, the Royal Opera, in its dogged all-Handel survey, has now staged “Giustino” (1737), in the Linbury Theatre. A good director could doubtless make something special from this complicated plot, but the Royal has given it to the feckless Joe Hill-Gibbins. He and his designer Rosanna Vize waste everyone’s time by having characters play with various suspended lamps; he makes the many long arias feel like exercises in wasting time. Most of the characters are dressed alike, which does not help when we are wondering not just who’s who but why should we care.

Thank heavens for the musicians of La Nuova Musica, whose playing under the direction of conductor David Bates often makes the Linbury space feel electric. The singers Polly Leech, Keri Fuge, Mireille Asselin, and Esme Bronwen-Smith all did marvels with their individual arias; the quality of the women’s chest registers was terrific. But all of them needed a stage director who could tell a story and differentiate between characters. 

• III.

Conductor Edward Gardner always has authority. On Friday 3 October, shaping Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, he brought out all the darkness in the third movement, so that the innocence that colours so much of the rest of the symphony made all the greater impact. 

In this concert, the Fourth followed Hans Abrahamsen’s song cycle “Let me tell you” (2014), an artfully contrived version of the “Hamlet” character of Ophelia as worded by Paul Griffiths. The soprano Jennifer France sang both this and the Mahler: her small and pallid voice - utterly lacking chest tones - did no favour to either score.

• IV.

“Hamlet” is the play that comes round most often. In the National’s new production, directed by Robert Hastie in the Lyttelton Theatre, the familiar tragedy runs with terrific speed, while often feeling unfamiliar. If the action is amplified, this is so subtly done the audience does not notice. Is it weird or is revealing that “To be or not to be” made no impression (at least on me), while an often omitted scene for Gertrude (Ayesha Dharker) and Horatio (Tessa Wong) did make a keen impact? As the First Player, Siobhán Redmond brings terrific freshness to the play-within-the-play. Alistair Petrie is a truly politic Claudius: you feel the wheels of his brain turning. 

Best of all - and most startling - is Francesca Mills as Ophelia. Mills Is among the most brilliant dwarf performers I have ever seen. She is so vivid, so unapologetic, that she obliges the audience at once to take her on her terms: her voice, her gestures, her personality are far from small. Ophelia’s two mad scenes usually feel the hardest assignments In acting, but Mills shows why they can be passages of real release for this character. Amazingly, she  becomes the production’s most three-dimensional character.

Hiran Abeysekera, a black actor, has good looks, charm, humour, intelligence, and energy in the play’s title role: he’s riveting. Unfortunately, he chooses to pitch his voice high throughout the role, as if affecting a youthful sound. The effect is that he sounds not-quite-sincere throughout. He has humour but not wit. He has amiability but not pathos. This tilts the whole play off balance. 

@Alastair Macaulay 2025