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- (ORCHESTRA PLAYS)
- I think this is the essence of what opera should be about
in that we're in one of the most beautiful places in the world
and this view, with the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Opera House
and the city of Sydney skyline,
and this production is enormous, it's an enormous production.
- (ORCHESTRA PLAYS)
- And huge tanks being brought in on cranes
and trucks being brought in on cranes.
And Escamillo, the bullfighter, when he makes his entrance,
it's one of the great show-stopping entrances of all time.
- I love everything about it. I could do it every night of my life.
Because there's always something new in it,
there's always something new to find in it,
and however you feel on that day,
if you're absolutely angry or in love, joyous, whatever,
you can find that in the music.
And it just solves life's problems.
- (SINGS IN FRENCH)
- And Carmen is one of those incredibly theatrical characters,
and so if you have a great Carmen, and we've got two fantastic Carmens,
Rinat Shaham and Milijana Nikolic,
they really hold the stage and you go on her journey.
- (SINGS IN FRENCH)
- Well, she's definitely not the girl next door. (LAUGHS)
She is very strong
and very manly in a way.
She knows what she wants, she's very charismatic.
Because we're doing so many shows,
we, of course, have to divide the task.
What I bring into the role is different from what Milijana is bringing
and, you know, it's wonderful both ways.
- Carmen is such a fascinating woman.
She's not your ordinary gypsy.
She obviously has some special sex appeal
and special allure around her
that every man would love to watch her
and every woman would love to be her.
(SINGS IN FRENCH)
- This is the only entrance/exit.
So this crazy pontoon that you can feel the tide is moving up and down
is the only exit and entrance to the whole underworld which is the stage.
So underneath there are the dressing rooms, the orchestra pit,
all the crew that are driving the cranes, the mechanists,
the prop staff, everybody. And they come along this small walkway
and just in case somebody falls in, there's a lifeguard sitting on the shore
who's here whenever anybody is doing something on site.
- The whole stage is on the water,
so we will need to be very careful not to jump in.
You know... (LAUGHS)
Not to fall or do something funny so that we finish in the water.
- I'm the sound designer for the project
and usually operas don't have sound designers
because they're natural, live, acoustic events,
but this one is quite different in that we don't have an orchestra pit
that the audience can hear,
we don't have an auditorium that captures,
amplifies and reflects the voices of the singers.
So our role as an audio department is to capture the performance live
from the orchestra's perspective and the singer's perspective
and translate that to the audience,
and in this case, it's 3,500 people sitting outside.
- We've got a whole different set of speakers,
hologramatic sound that really envelopes you
so you feel, as an audience member, that you're absolutely part of this piece
and it just carries you along.
- So this is the orchestra pit that holds the 45 musicians.
There's a long view of the stage for Brian, the conductor.
- The people on stage see me via a delayed camera image
at the back, behind the audience.
Underneath the stage, I have a camera on me
and a television monitor.
And that's the connection we have.
But we have some ESP connection, you know?
We know what we're going to do.
- The sound is enormously important,
which is why the orchestra is under the stage,
fundamentally in a sound studio.
So that if there is some wind, it won't be blowing through their microphones
and there won't be any effect from changes in temperature of the weather
that affects the string instruments particularly.
So the sound that comes out of the orchestra is really, really first-rate.
- We are setting it in Franco's reign of Spain, in Seville,
where the town is occupied by the soldiers
and these girls that work in the cigarette factories where Carmen works
and she kind of arrives and the story kind of takes off
in these kind of conflicted relationships between a series of men.
I researched a lot of gypsy flamenco rhythm from the 1920s and 1930s.
I took those kind of rhythms
and I fleshed them out and made them much more muscular and edgy.
So normally in the cafe scene, it's quite underneath yourself
and kind of very flamenco, very right and very precise,
but I start that way and then I get really, really big.
If it drizzles, we still go on, but if it downpours, I guess we don't.
You know, I have a girl in the Act 4 entr'acte who comes out,
a featured dancer comes out as a flamenco dancer
and she has this flamenco skirt that's four metres wide in a circle.
And seven boys manipulate the skirt.
And I tell you what, if there's a big wind
and it gets underneath this skirt,
it won't be Carmen, it'll be Mary Poppins.
That's what I'm frightened of. (LAUGHS)
- One of the great things about the production we did last year
of La Traviata at Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour
was the fact that out of the 41,000 tickets that we sold,
61 percent of those people had never been to the opera before.
So it's a phenomenal number of people who've never been to the opera
have had that experience and enjoyed in enormously.
When there's a wonderful work of art,
you wanna share it with as many people as possible.
And by doing this, by creating an event like this...
And I'm sure Bizet would've been thrilled
that so many people were coming to see the opera that he wrote,
and everyone told him it was a disaster
and the poor fellow died before this incredible success.
It's a wonderful, wonderful piece.
And it doesn't matter whether you're an opera fan or not,
you come to this event and I guarantee that you will have
one of the most special evenings of your entire life.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)