Michieletto’s excellent new Carmen lit up by Beczała and Akhmetshina at Covent Garden

For a top ten opera, a work that gets performed hundreds of times each year, Carmen presents a surprising number of difficulties, not least the fact that all the big hits happen before the interval. Bereft of those, Acts 3 and 4 can drag horribly. That’s emphatically not the case for Damiano Michieletto’s new production at Covent Garden. Transforming Bizet’s “picturesque and wild, rocky site” into the warehouse from which the smugglers are fetching their goods works brilliantly, and a visual subplot of a kidnapped and ransomed Zuniga is a stroke of genius. The drama simmers and sizzles.

Michieletto directs Carmen like a verismo piece, using the same production team that brought us an exceptional Cav and Pag. He adds a plethora of visual details and subplots to drive the story along and to place it into a context, the extreme, searing heat of a one-horse town where there is little to do but fight or have sex. To give a few examples of many: watch for the two girls lolling alluringly (future Carmens in the making) before throwing a banger at the distracted Don José; or for the older children viciously baiting the terrified younger ones. This is a place where violence is endemic and starts young. The tailor meticulously stitching Escamillo’s traje de luces jacket ahead of the bullfight is a delicious touch. Paolo Fantin’s sets are clever and effective. Each act has same inner space surrounded by the great outdoors, but each is different: police station, nightclub, warehouse, dressing room.

A central additional idea is the presence of Don José’s mother – a black-clad figure who, when she’s not shuffling a pack of cards to the accompaniment of Bizet’s fate motif, could be straight out of The House of Bernarda Alba. By the medium of Micaëla, she continually seeks to disrupt whatever happy future José might have with Carmen. And this production makes Carmen far more interesting than the standard femme fatale; this is a woman continually being put in impossible positions from which she attempts to escape – unsuccessfully, in the end – using the only tools at her disposal: guile and sexuality.

All this would be for nothing without some outstanding acting performances. The quartet of smugglers and their molls are magnetic (Pierre Doyen, Vincent Ordonneau, Gabrielė Kupšytė and Sarah Dufresne). Blaise Malaba is an imposing Zuniga – an Escamillo of the future, perhaps. Aigul Akhmetshina is both nuanced and completely credible in the title role. So expertly do her movement and gesture draw you into her character that you almost forget what a wonderful voice you are listening to, strong and smooth through her range.

As Don José, Piotr Beczała may not be quite up to those heights of acting, but he more than makes up for it in sheer vocal charisma. It’s a fabulous tenor voice with that miraculous quality of a honeyed timbre that sounds effortless, making you think that he’s just sung at full power and then turning on the afterburners to thrill at the end of the verse. We don’t get many chances to see Beczała in the UK and this was a privilege.

I enjoyed watching Kostas Smorginas as Escamillo in Act 3, where his interactions with Don José worked well both vocally and in stage movement (the fight scene was brilliantly done, with Smorginas using his jacket like a bullfighter's cape). But he had been less convincing in his grand entry in the previous act; the Toreador Song left me wanting more and he didn’t display that overweening self-confidence that should be Escamillo’s hallmark.

The Royal Opera Chorus were on excellent form, with unusually clear French diction to add to a spirited sound. The children from the Royal Opera’s Youth Opera Company were outstanding. Michieletto gives them a central role in the extended scene-setting that is Act 1 and the verve of their singing and their precise execution of complex stage movement were central to the success of the act.

The orchestral performance was less successful. Antonello Manacorda kept everything bright, pacey and accurate, but for the standout big hits like the Seguidilla or the Chanson bohème, there seemed to be little left in the tank to turn on a bit of extra pizzazz.

For the top crowd-pleasing operas, The Royal Opera like to have productions that run for many years. They didn’t get that with Barrie Kosky’s more radical 2018 staging, which split the crowds. In contrast, this staging hits all the right notes. It won’t frighten the traditionalists, but it provides plenty of hard-hitting drama and shows the characters in a new light, all the while giving the glittery set pieces all the space they need. It wouldn’t surprise me if this production is still being revived decades on.