Carmen (Bizet), production by Opera’r Ddraig, 21/02/2014.

Opera’r Draig, an amateur opera company dominated by students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, is no longer in its infancy. Five years have passed since its founding, and half a dozen dynamic, entertaining and very thrifty productions are testament to Ddraig’s winning formula. Their latest endeavour – the most challenging yet – was Bizet’s red-hot Carmen, in a production at The Gate theatre running three days. Their return to The Gate was a wise and welcome move: last year’s production of Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld struggled against a desperately constricting set design in Cardiff Bay’s Coal Exchange. The Gate may be small, but it seems to suit Ddraig’s bare-bones production style and tongue-in-cheek audience connectivity.

Carmen lives or dies by its title character. Cast a fine voice senza shakiran hips and she loses any allure. Bring in a tenacious actress whose voice isn’t up to the challenge and it’s downright disappointing. The casting of Clare Ghigo, therefore, was a stroke of wisdom bordering on the miraculous. This young Maltese mezzo joined the gang after graduating from Guildhall, and certainly she brought a certain something. Not only did she own the theatre with her formidable and versatile voice, but she conjured up the gypsy girl’s tragic appeal marvellously. Man of the match, without question, to Ms. Ghigo. Sadly, the lethally love-struck Don Jose, played by Ben Thapa, rather paled by comparison. While Mr. Thapa’s vocal portrayal was undeniably skilful, his rendering of Jose as a petulant sociopath was a little annoying, and any sympathy for the ‘fallen man’ was lost.

The chorus always plays a crucial role in Ddraig productions. Its energy and force of presence acts as a dynamic set: a back-drop of colour and emotional context for the leads to play off. Carmen’s singing, dancing chorus outstripped even the can-canning, debauched excitement of Orpheus’s. These hugely dedicated Ddraig performers deserve enormous credit. The orchestra, too, surpassed that of past productions, and excepting a couple of intonationally questionable moments, what I saw was a tight ensemble of which any professional pit would be proud. All told, conductor Jack Lovell succeeded in putting together a musically sophisticated opera.

Can there be a downer in this effusiveness? Perhaps. The strength of opera as a genre is its social contextuality. ENO’s gritty production of Peter Grimes (which ended on 23^rd February) has gained all the more potency in light of a recent wave of child-abuse scandals, and the decision by director David Alden to paint the Borough whistle-blowers in such dark light was as courageous as it was uncomfortable. WNO’s new rendition of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, set in a busy commuter station, is starkly reflective of recent concerns about modern-day sex slavery.

Opera’r Ddraig put on productions of extremely high musical and dramatic quality, and Carmen has set the bar even higher. But that’s not enough anymore. What I want to see now is something a little more explorative.

Find more about Opera'r Ddraig here: http://www.operarddraig.co.uk

Peter L. Wagstaff