Cabaret / “Carmen the Cabaret”, Eliane Morel and Daryl Wallis. At Smiths’ Alternative, October 28. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

IN transforming Bizet’s “Carmen” into a post-modern cabaret, ANU School of Music graduate and mezzo soprano Eliane Morel has hit upon several convenient facts.

First is the fact that “Carmen” is pretty well the most popular opera in the world, with lots of good yarns attached to its initial failure.

Next, Carmen, has all the best tunes.

Then there’s the glaring fact that the “hero” Don José is a milksop and a coward, though Morel goes one step further and deconstructs his motivations to make him a miserable power-hungry perpetrator of domestic violence.

At the base of this work by Morel, a self-styled “Carmen” nerd, is the lamentable fact that mezzo sopranos are usually relegated to the sidelines in opera – except for “Carmen”.

Added to this her fangirl fascination with the fiery gypsy (careful, we must say Rom or Roma these days), something she assumes all women in the audience will share, and you have the recipe for some fine music, with pianist Daryl Wallis gentle playing in the background.

After a beautiful opening where Morel intones her own translation of the words of Carmen’s famous “Habanera,” (“That’s Love…) it takes a very, very long time for her to get to the meat of the show.

Here Morel engages in a bit too much chitchat, with her jokey style and tendency towards facial-mugging and excessive detail, all clearly in need of a firm directorial hand. For, let’s face it, many had come to hear Bizet’s famous hits and the constant need to change theatrical register made great demands. With such an elaborate scenario, one wonders whether Morel would not have done better to keep it all a bit simpler.

In time, we do get to hear most of the great songs, but by this time it’s not Morel speaking but the “real” Carmen (also played by Morel), conjured up from the spiritual world to give us her side of the story.

This gives rise to some telling moments, as in the scene where Carmen foresees her death and sings of it. As well, the “real” Carmen’s depiction of her relationship with Don José gives insight as to why in the opera we never actually see the them in a truly loving scene.

In a post-modern dialogue between fact and fiction the present-day Morel, now a recorded voice, stops the action to remind us about the inauthenticity of Bizet’s Rom dance, the cruelty of bullfighting and the power relationship between Jose and Carmen, here presented as the victim.

But hang on.

Is this not the great tragic character who mercilessly taunts every man she meets, defies death when she sees it in the cards, brazenly tells Escamillo the toreador, “may I die if I have ever loved anyone as much as you” and refuses to run when she know Don Jose is out to kill her?

Morel deflates the romantic vision of the opera with her contemporary analysis, and steps downstage stage at the end to suggest that there may be many Carmens in the audience, and that they don’t deserve to die.

But that’s just part of the “real” story.