Gypsy siren of Seville

By WILLIAM DART


Jonathan Cocker made his first visit to New Zealand last year, overseeing the re-staging of Anthony Besch's Tosca for NBR New Zealand Opera. The English director has now returned, with his own production of Bizet's Carmen, which opens in Auckland tonight.

The man's enthusiasm bubbles over. "The most important thing about opera is its visceral appreciation of the human voice," he says. "There's nothing like a human voice in its ability to move someone."

It was his bare-bones treatment of Carmen for the South Bank Centre that gave Cocker his greatest insight into Bizet's opera.

"I had to focus completely on the performers, which made me realise that the most important thing here was the characters.

"In some ways Carmen is almost a domestic drama," he explains. "You've got six principal characters and the whole thing revolves around this tightly knit group. The important thing is getting the narrative going."

There is much that's traditional in Cocker's staging and he admits he has "stayed with the period and kept it within a framework that people can recognise".

"It's not outlandish. You don't spend half the first act working out why it is set here, meaning you've missed half the story."

Having said this, Cocker points out that some might be surprised by John Verryt's set.

"It very much follows the designs of the Spanish painter Antoni Tapies. They're very stylised - walls don't look like walls."

The whole Kiwi Carmen experience has been an uplifting one. An immediate rapport with the cast in the Wellington rehearsal room a month ago has made the whole thing an "absolutely fantastic experience" and Cocker is quick to praise his leading lady, American mezzo Jessie Raven, as "very experienced but not jaded, still open to ideas and new interpretations".

"It's too easy to see Carmen as a hard-hearted trollop," he cautions. "She is absolutely honest, absolutely upfront, a woman of complete integrity. From the beginning we know how she behaves. She never tells a lie.

"She's an enormously honest person who is strong enough to be honest with herself, and ultimately it's this honesty which is her downfall."

He also stands up for the character of Don Jose, to be sung by Puerto Rican tenor Rafael Davila - "if Jose was an utter weakling we wouldn't be interested in him" - and clearly has a lot of time for Micaela, who will be played by Jenny Wollerman, one of just a few New Zealanders in the cast.

"This is a very difficult role to pull off. Micaela can't be portrayed as weak and feeble. To make the narrative work she has to be a viable foil to Carmen, we have to believe there's a possibility that Don Jose could go back to her."

Perhaps it's the earthiness of Carmen and her cohorts but, as our conversation strays into other areas, I find this affable Englishman has a secret passion he is hoping to indulge in this part of the world.

Jonathan Cocker loves to yodel, and he tells how, last week, he converted conductor Emmanuel Plasson and the opera's three leading players into "yodelling fanatics" after playing Mary Schneider yodelling her way through the Carmen Prelude.

In fact, he's a fanatic with "a large collection of Kiwi yodelling CDs ... always rooting around trying to find more".

I point out that our own Dame Malvina Major is an accomplished yodeller. He is aware of her talents here and, dropping his voice, admits to being a little shy about asking for lessons.

"People laugh but I brazen this thing out. I can do the jumps but I get lost trying to join them together."

Cocker is also looking forward to returning to Israel, where he will be working with a group of Arab and Jewish students on a production of The Magic Flute.

He downplays the dangers - "Tel Aviv is like any other Mediterranean city and seems safe" - and fondly remembers a past production of The Bartered Bride with the same mix of students.

"It was the first Hebrew translation and tremendous fun. The strange thing was that those Eastern European tunes sometimes have a certain Middle Eastern lilt to them."

In the meantime, with seguidillas and habaneros on the menu, along with what I'm told is some pretty impressive castanet clicking from Jessie Raven, we are staying in the Spanish city of Seville.

Performance

*What: Carmen, by Bizet

*Where and when: Aotea Centre, 7.30 tonight and Oct 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17; 2pm Oct 17