Traveller women give modern touches to Carmen

Reworked version of Bizet's opera of unrequited love and jealousy gets one-off performance at Royal Albert Hall

Ahmad Ali guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 March 2009 11.41 GMT

A modern version of Carmen written by Traveller women will be staged at the Royal Albert Hall today.

The one-off production will be performed in the Elgar Room by a cast of leading TV and stage actors. It is a collaboration between the Traveller Women's Group, based in Ealing, west London, and students from the Purcell School of Music in Hertfordshire.

Why Didn't I Tell You How Much I Loved You?, like the original that inspired it, is the story of an ill-fated Gypsy woman who falls in love with the wrong man. In the new version, however, Carmen has been replaced by Chantelle, an English Gypsy who falls in love with an Irish Traveller called Paddy.

"When we first heard about the offer we thought they were having a laugh," said Margaret, 40, one of the 16 writers involved in the project. She said she and the others were "delighted" to take part.

The women worked with playwright Darren Rapier and poet Ian McMillan in a series of workshops to realise their own interpretation, using Bizet's narrative as a starting point. They drew upon experiences of racism, and wrote about health issues affecting their communities, such as heavy smoking and difficulty accessing healthcare.

The tale focuses on internal differences within the Traveller population and undermines the misconception that Travellers are a homogenous group. According to Margaret: "Everyone thinks Irish and English Travellers are the same but there are differences in what girls are allowed to do." She added: "We are devout Catholics. Faith is central to our culture."

The story is set in London but much of the action takes place at the annual Appleby horse fair in Cumbria - one of the largest of its kind and an important cultural event in the Traveller calender. "The original happens in a tobacco factory," said Samantha, another of the writers. "We thought: 'Where would it take place for a Traveller?' We decided on Appleby as Irish dancing, horse dealing and everything in our culture are on display there," she added.

The project is a part of the Royal Albert Hall's training and participation programme, and follows on from the success of last year's Tosca project, in which ex-offenders from Enfield in north London rewrote the opera, setting it on a housing estate.

Alastair Tallon, head of learning and participation, said a key objective is to create interaction between groups that would not normally be in contact - in this case, Travellers and music students. Tallon, whose job is to diversify visitors to the Royal Albert Hall, said all the women involved in the project would come to see the production. He added: "Enjoying opera is not just about musical appreciation. It appeals to the human condition. We wanted to know how people relate to its themes."

Music note: Black knights and seductive Gypsies romp in St. Paul

By Rebecca Collins , TC Daily Planet
September 25, 2008

The turnout on Tuesday night at the Ordway for the Minnesota Opera’s staging of Verdi’s Il trovatore (The Troubadour) was impressive. A bustling lobby and long line at the box office translated into a full house. And people do dress for the occasion—rumors of Minnesotans wearing jeans to the opera proved to be mostly false. It’s good to know there is a place in the Twin Cities to don one’s Oscar de la Renta stiletto heels or, in the case of one elderly gentleman, one’s kimono.

Il Trovatore, an opera with music by Giuseppe Verdi and libretto by Leone
Emanuele Bardare and Salvatore Cammarano; directed by Kevin Newbury. Presented by the Minnesota Opera through September 28 at the Ordway Center, 345 Washington St., St. Paul. For tickets ($65-$150) and information, see mnopera.org.

There was good reason for the high attendance. More happens in Il trovatore, a romantic tragedy set in Spain during the Renaissance, than on a whole season of Flavor of Love.

First, the dramatic back story. A young boy is bewitched by a Gypsy and falls ill. The Gypsy is hunted down and burned at the stake. As she is dying, she orders her daughter, Azucena (Olga Savona), to avenge her death. Azucena kidnaps the boy and prepares to throw him into the still-smoldering ashes of the pyre. But—oops!—in her grief she accidentally incinerates her own son instead. She decides to keep the kidnapped boy and raise him as her own.

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