Longborough's Carmen nears perfection; the hunt for a perfect Cotswold home struggles

Earlier this week I was in a heated debate about race and casting. It’s an incendiary topic, with one extreme demanding colour-blind, rainbow-spectrumed variety for every role, whatever its provenance or history, while the other bristles at any deviation from the historical record or the original environment of the author. From Hamilton to Bridgerton, and scores of less renown productions, playing with original source material to infuse modern sensibilities has become de rigueur.

I’m not sure it’s that new a trend. Medieval mystery plays popularised, and messed with, 1,000-year-old bible stories. Shakespeare wreaked havoc with his source material. Western art portrayed historic scenes in contemporary costume until the 19th century. But I doubt creative changes have ever been so politically charged as they are in this woke age.

Longborough’s production of Carmen will stir up purists on this front. The revisions here aren’t about race but about overturning late 19th century attitudes towards women. The traditional Carmen is a violent, manipulative seductress who embodies all of the Victorian era’s fear of strong, sexually active women. Our hearts are supposed to lie with the  the manipulated hero Don Jose, a noble but weak fool destroyed by his unrequited love. 

Though it keeps the words and music the same, Longborough’s staging and acting turn the story on its head. Carmen is a likeable, modern woman who plays the field. In this production she and her friends work in a meat packing plant rather than the cigarette factory, a subtle change that made them objects of exploitation rather than sexual appeal. Carmen appeared honestly in love with Don Jose until he got too clingy, and tries to get him to go back to the life he’s more suited to when their relationship cools. Jose becomes violently obsessed, and suddenly the old story becomes a modern one of a deranged stalker murdering his innocent victim.

This doesn’t entirely work. You can’t edit out, or forget, the fact that Carmen carves a cross into a girl’s forehead in a workplace fight to start the opera’s chain of events. Or that she’s a leader in a criminal underworld, deploying the sexual favours of her girl gang to corrupt the authorities. But with a bit of suspension of belief, a more sympathetic Carmen and a more psychotic Jose make for a more interesting and credible plot to modern eyes. Anyone raised Catholic will have a special, though uncomfortable, understanding of the way the flower Carmen originally uses to seduce Don Jose becomes a stigmata when he sews it into his hand, and bleeds when he tries to rip it out. Peter Gijsbertsen's excellent acting combined with his fine tenor to give us the most believeable ... and certainly the most insane ... Don Jose I've seen.

But Longborough's twist on the plot is most reliant on its Carmen.  Mezzo-soprano Margaret Plummer was fiery, sexy, likeable, kind-hearted, tough, and carried off some of opera's greatest arias with aplomb. We were lucky to see her and the rest of the cast in action; Covid had swept through the performers and ours was the first time in a week of attempts they'd been able to muster the whole cast and deliver director Mathilde Lopez' vision.

Together with Siegfried earlier this summer, the duo may represent the best Longborough season we've seen in years. Next year brings Gotterdamerung plus Donizetti's Elixir of Love, Purcell's Fairy Queen and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, It will be the first season in years we'll be properly torn on which to put on the short list. We can stretch to three weekends in the Cotswolds but four is a bit profligate, and complicated by our continuing search for a new home-away-from-home since our favourite B&B closed down. My dream is to find a place in Stow we could rent for a week or even two at a time, working from the Cotswolds, going to the opera, and getting a sense of what the town might be like as a retirement location. But we've yet to find the right venue.

Our Seigfried weekend saw us at The Stag at Stow. Right on the main market square, dog friendly with a generously-sized double bedroom, beautifully decorated and with both patio dining and a large beer garden, delicious breakfast and an excellent restaurant for dinner, it now stands at the top of our B&B league table for the area. It doesn't have a comfortable indoor lounge area for residents besides its pub, however, and room rates start at around £270 per night ... making it impractical for a whole week.

We went for the apartment option this past weekend. Church Suite is one of five flats carved out of the old Methodist church on Sheep Street. It's beautifully designed, with a bedroom and bath in a loft and sitting room and kitchen below, a large light well running the full height of the unit to show off one of the old windows. The design can make the sitting room feel a bit claustrophobic, but overall it's a lovely place and in spotless shape except for an otherwise uncharacteristic bit of mould in the shower grouting. Like the Stag, the central location means that you're within walking distance of all the dining and shopping options, though during the day you do have to move your car every two hours (or park on the outskirts). The real problem here, however, is that the WiFi was terrible. We could never work from here. And Church Suite is almost as expensive as The Stag; £398 for two nights, but without breakfast. While the living space would be better than the Stag's for a full week, I'd like a better price.

The Beautiful Little House, about 300 metres further away from the centre of town than Church Suite, was our home for a whole week last year, and was by far the best deal of the lot with the price for the week at under £600 and parking on the street outside. The house lacked the boutique hotel decor of both The Stag and Church Suite, but it offered a lot more space with a separate kitchen and sitting room, two bedrooms upstairs and an outdoor, walled patio. As with the other two, it's dog friendly. It had great WiFi. The problem? My husband is a delicate sleeper and had issues with the mattress. So while I'd like to head back there and book it for longer stretches of the summer, it's a no from him. And thus our Cotswolds search continues...