Carmen Syuta

A wonderful production and a fascinating ballet. The story maintains its power, while Shchedrin's re-arranging of basically Bizet's score is clever, beautiful and energetic. The costumes and sets are simple, and there are times where the sets have a sparseness to them, but they are well-lit and have some nice colour so they are interesting in a simple way but never to the extent that they're ugly. The orchestral playing for a ballet with a relatively small amount of scoring is vibrant and incisive, while the conducting allows the passion to sear and the intimacy to touch. The choreography is very sensual, but not too much, and elegant while not diluting the fiery passion and tension. Escamillo's moves and gestures are strongly reminiscent of those that a toreno would do. The dancing is just great, Alexander Godunov is a dashing, expressive and tormented-by-love Don Jose and Sergei Radchenko is a swaggering Escamillo. But Maya Plisetskaya is the star here and she shows why she is considered one of the greatest, influential and most unique ballerinas of her time and perhaps even there is/ever was. Dramatically she is seductive, sultry and passionate while also heartfelt and expressive, and anybody who is in awe and envious of her jumps, strength, fluidity and her ability to make her dancing so clean and easy will not be disappointed here, her dancing and skill is a marvel. All in all a wonderful production of an interesting ballet, everything is done remarkably but Plisetskaya dominates and in a very great way. 10/10 Bethany Cox