Amal Choucri Catta revels in fireworks of the human frame Georges Bizet's Carmen by the Ballet Flamenco de Madrid, Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 18-20 Jan, 8pm and Alexandria's Sayed Darwish Theatre, 22- 23 Jan, 8pm The curtain opened to a group of women in black. They formed a protective dark circle around the Diva. The scene was ruthlessly moving -- a mysterious omen of damnation and death. Suddenly the circle opened, revealing Carmen below glowing spotlights -- beautiful in her long white gown, frills and ruffles insolently flouncing as she whipped into a turn, lashing her skirt into figures of eight. She was the queen. She stirred up turmoil, smiling and struggling as she did her thing, her arms mastering and moulding space you would have thought beyond her reach. As the music swelled to Bizet's Torreador, en grande, she joined the girls who had just left the tobacco factory. They were sitting around flirting with soldiers and gypsies when Bizet's music abruptly sounded in a storm of Flamenco. Heels vivaciously pounded the stage as the girls started quarrelling with Carmen, who was arrested for wounding one of her companions. Don Jose is sent out to guard her. She coaxed and seduced him, inviting him to meet her at Lilas Pastia's tavern, at which point Bizet's music came back on -- with Carmen's aria from Scene Five of the First Act: " L'amour est un oiseau rebel que nul ne peut apprivoiser... " Then Don Jose was arrested and imprisoned for letting Carmen go. Based on Prosper Merimée's novel of 1845, Bizet's four-act opera, with a libretto by Meilhac and Halevy, was premiered in Paris in 1875. Since then it has turned into one of the most popular operas -- and it remains so to this day. It is a story of love, of deception, jealousy and death. With Carmen, Bizet revolutionised opera, replacing snow-white heroines and clean-cut heroes with creatures of flesh and passion. The ardent love affair between the gypsy girl and the soldier, who eventually kills her, is rendered all the more intense by a narrative style both cool and laconic. Bizet himself had chosen the subject with a good libretto to inspire him. Don Jose's murderous love is as potent as Carmen's turbulent sexuality; and the subtle characterisation derives from, among other psychological insights, Merimée's remark that "women and cats don't come when you call them, but when you don't". Given his varied experience of mistresses and other lovers, this was a fact of life that Bizet could wryly acknowledge; his emotional investment in the music is evident. Still, Carmen had a disastrous premiere: people were scandalised by the portrayal of lustful gypsy and her disgraceful love. The 36-year-old Bizet, already ill and clinically depressed, died three months later, at a time when the theatre management was giving away tickets in a desperate effort to fill the empty hall. Convinced that his opera was failure, Bizet went to his death unaware that, in the following year, Carmen was to set off on a triumphant international career. Tchaikovsky predicted that it would be the world's most famous opera -- and he was not wrong. Today the tunes are familiar to people who have never set foot in an opera house and if asked wouldn't know the composer's name. Carmen has inspired composers and choreographers -- among them the Spanish Ballet Flamenco de Madrid who had already presented the music with Flamenco interludes here in October 2004. This time they returned with 20 dancers and three musicians who seemed to materialise sporadically out of the shadows. We had had Carmen as an opera when Rodin Shchedrin made it into a ballet and Antonio Gades presented Flamenco Carmen in 1989. The current version is rather different, however, with the Ballet Flamenco de Madrid trying to integrate Bizet's music into Flamenco -- undoubtedly not an easy task. Many viewers preferred one or the other, not both, Flamenco in particular being particularly popular here. Andalusia, the home of Flamenco, has a strong musical tradition that goes back to when tribes of gypsies settled southern Spain in the 15th century. Throughout its history, Andalusia was home to people of different cultures -- Romans, Jews, Arabs and Africans. The gypsy arrival coincided with Ferdinand and Isabella's conquest of Granada, the last Arab bastion, and the expulsion of Arabs from Spain. According to historian Felix Grande, "If we do not relate to the music, to brutality, repression, hunger, fear, menace, resistance and suffering, then we shall not find the reality of Cante Flamenco. It is a storm of exasperation and grief." While earlier records suggest that Flamenco was at one time unaccompanied, it is rather hard to imagine it without the guitar, which forms an integral part of the cante ; it was in regular use by the 19th century. The guitar has, of course, its own exceptionally long history in Spain. In the 19th century two types of singing prevailed in Spain: the Cante Gillano of the gypsies and the Cante Andaluz: the fusion of these two forms resulted in the Cante Flamenco, a melody popular in Andalusia and used in both song and dance. It is a branch of the Cante Jonda, the deep song, evocative of African trance -- inducing rhythms and of Oriental poetry. On the Opera stage, the three musician-singers pursued their Cante Flamenco to the quick footwork and non-stop complex dancing, evolving from slow, stalking, meditative images to defiant stamping outbursts. Carmen loved Don Jose, but grew weary of that love after a brief period. Their pas-de-deux were sensual and passionate, as red as Carmen's rose and as black as death in the arena. There was blood on the sun-bathed sand at the foot of the mountains where the lovers tried to take refuge; once again death was on the cards. As the story continued, with the girls in bright gowns and the soldiers, mostly in uniform, dancing to Sara Lezana's choreography, the torero Escamillo made his entry into the tavern and into Carmen's heart. Their dance ignited the stage; it was vibrant, erotic, intense -- the beginning of Carmen's end. Bizet's music returned once again while Don Jose was stabbing Carmen in a darkened spot. With the crowds cheering Escamillo in the arena and the Cairene audience cheering the dancers on stage.
