Interview, Aigul Akhmetshina on 'Fifty Shades of Carmen'

Aigul Akhmetshina has spent much of the past year getting under Carmen's skin, both on stage and in the recording studio - currently singing the role at Glyndebourne, she's also appeared in new productions at the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House this season as well as recording three excerpts from the opera for her debut solo album on Decca.

In between her performances in Damiano Michieletto's London production this spring, I met up with her in the Crush Room at Covent Garden to find out more about the different facets of the role which she's uncovered in the process, how she recharges her batteries on her days off, her personal relationships with the other characters who appear on the album - and why she wishes that casting-directors would give her a few more opportunities to literally wear the trousers...

Carmen seems to account for about 75% of your work this year! Was spending so much time with her a daunting prospect?

When I looked at my schedule after everything was announced, I thought ‘Gosh, how am I going to do this?’ - that’s the main reason why I’m calling this season ‘50 Shades of Carmen’! The secondary reason was the process: I say ‘50 Shades’ because the good thing is that each production is different, and that helps to transform and develop the character. Every Carmen involves a lot of deep psychological work, but having different colleagues, different concepts and different directors for each production stops it from getting old.

Have any of those colleagues and directors opened up perspectives on Carmen which you hadn’t thought about when you started singing the role?

I was very curious about this role right from the beginning of my singing career, and I knew that she would be a complicated, challenging character. In some ways I bring Carmen to life through my own experience, and sometimes she makes me confront sides of myself which I don’t usually like to show: for example in this production at the Royal Opera House, my Carmen had to be very vulnerable. That was a big challenge for me but I accepted, and our director Damiano Michieletto was constantly encouraging me into that specific psychological state to transmit the character as we saw her. Lots of people have acknowledged that this Carmen is different: some of my friends come to every production I do, so they’ve had the opportunity to see my Carmen develop from my very first performance (which was also at the ROH!).

Tell me more about some of the specific moments where you tap into her vulnerability...

In Damiano's production we have a couple of very clear scenes where we see Carmen virtually broken; most of them happen when she’s alone, but the first time we see her fragility is when she opens up to Don José in Act Two. She is basically naked in front of him (in terms of her soul as well as her body!), and he kind of rejects her - instead of explaining anything, he gets distracted and tries to just leave. He doesn’t really know what he wants, but what she actually wants is for him to say ‘YES, I will go with you to the mountains’. He kills her hope in this moment, because she genuinely thought that he was different from other men: the reason she was so drawn to him in the first place was because he looked at her differently and didn’t treat her as an object. She felt that he was actually interested in what’s happening inside of her, and nobody else seems to care about that.

Carmen may seem gregarious, but she’s always kind of alone. She’s entertaining, she’s strong, and she tries not to give anyone an opportunity to take advantage of her: like a wolf hiding in its cage, she rarely lets people get too close. So when she does open up to someone and gets pushed away, she takes it very hard – that’s the reason why she loses her temper and says ‘OK, go away!’. In this moment she’s looking for commitment and acceptance, and when that doesn’t come she feels like a fool.

Another key moment is when she reads the cards and realises that she cannot run away from destiny: the cards never lie, and she knows that. Usually I perform that aria with strength, acceptance and dignity, whereas in this production Damiano asked me to be really vulnerable. He wanted me to break down in that scene; initially I was a bit resistant to that, but daring to show her fear was a big eye-opener for me.

This is my eighth production of Carmen, but I’d never let her be so human before. I think everyone can relate to that, because very often in our ordinary lives we put on a mask and don’t want to reveal that we’re afraid. But that’s what is so special about Damiano’s production, the fact that the mask slips and we see so many different colours and emotional states.

And presumably her fatal confrontation with Don José in the final scene plays out rather differently if you allow her to show fear...?

That final scene is so fascinating because there you see such anger and frustration, but there’s also regret at the way things have turned out. I think on some level she does still love him, but she can’t take him back without breaking her own rules: if somebody leaves her, she burns the bridges and that’s the end of it. And in some moments she almost despises him: ‘What are you doing? Be a man! Don’t beg!’. Musically it’s written so strongly, and in this production we don’t have anything around us: it’s an empty stage and two people have to fill it…with passion, resentment, confrontation, fear, with the full spectrum of emotions. It’s quite draining!

How do you take care of yourself vocally and emotionally when you’re singing such an intense role so frequently?

Now that my schedule is so busy and I have so little time for recovery, I feel that’s very important: the body inevitably starts reacting to all those strong emotions, and that makes you feel very tired. I used to spend all my spare time around my friends, which was amazing, but now I try to spend at least a full day at home after a show (ideally in bed!). I’ll maybe watch some movies, but otherwise it’s about staying within myself: no socialising, no learning other music, no communication with the outside world! And I know that a lot of artists do that: everyone needs their own space to recover, even if it’s just for a day.

Did you perform Carmen's arias in isolation for competitions and auditions much before you tackled the role on stage? 

I performed the Seguidilla a few times in competitions, but mainly I sang Rossini – lots of Rossini! But my story with Carmen actually started when I was little and had just started studying classical singing: in the village where I grew up we only had access to a handful of the most famous opera-scores, and that’s how I ended up singing the Habanera in Russian when I was 12! Of course at that age I really didn’t understand the meaning; I just went with the music and lyrics, and ‘played’ Carmen as I thought she was supposed to be. Now that I have so many productions (and my own life-experience) behind me I sing the arias very differently, even in concert.

Speaking of Rossini, do you see any parallels between Carmen and Rosina (beyond the fact that they both live in Seville!)?

I do, because Rosina is also quite strong. She uses her brain to trick Bartolo and to find her escape – exactly like Carmen, she also searches for freedom. She’s a very smart girl and she’s always looking for opportunities, constantly on the alert to see which door might open.

Rossini's Cenerentola (who also appears on the album) also longs for freedom, but is far less proactive about pursuing it...do you find it harder to get a grasp on this rather more passive heroine?

I really like Cenerentola too! Each role on the album is quite dear to me: they all mean something to me personally from a specific time in my career. Cenerentola was my first-ever role in a small festival, where I was sent after graduation just to try myself out in a real theatre.

When I was little my mum used to read me the fairy-tale, and I remember singing a nursery-rhyme about Cinderella; I would dress up as her for New Year’s Eve and even played her at school, which was fun! And I feel very close to Cinderella because my story has changed just like hers: one opportunity, one meeting changed the whole course of my life, and here I am at the Royal Opera House today!

Yes, the character probably is a bit passive: she just goes with her destiny rather than taking her life into her own hands and trying to change things. But if you think about the time when the fairy-tale is set, she probably couldn’t find the strength to go against her father and step-mother (although in Rossini’s opera it’s her step-father and there’s no step-mother figure, so it’s a slightly different story).

It's a treat to have a glimpse of you in a trouser-role, namely Bellini's Romeo from I Capuleti: have you sung him on stage yet?

Romeo was actually my first trouser-role, and it’s quite sad that I don’t often get to sing more: I’m always playing strong women or seductive women! I would love to play this character on stage in a proper production, but this was a concert version: it was my Salzburg debut, and I remember buying a tuxedo specifically for the performance! I couldn’t sing Romeo in a dress, because I needed to have the mentality and physicality of a man – or rather a teenage boy who’s very impatient, very in love, and in some ways a bit arrogant.

In this first scene (the aria that’s on the album) he enters the Capulets’ house disguised as his own servant, with his face hidden, but it’s hard for him to keep his temper: he says ‘Romeo can marry Giulietta and we will bring these two families together; he didn’t want to kill your son, and maybe you will accept him as a son…’ But when they don’t accept that, he loses his cool and says ‘Then there will be lots of blood and death!’. He says some horrible things and is very provocative, and I enjoyed the challenge of exploring how I would behave if I was a boy of that age; thankfully I have lots of nephews, and could watch how they react when they don’t get their own way!

We touched on how these characters shape or submit to their destiny, which has got me wondering where you see yourself in twenty years' time...?

I hope I’ll still be able to sing and be in good shape! But I also hope that by then I will have some sort of foundation or organisation to help young artists (or not-so-young artists!): I have a vague couple of ideas which I need to bring together on that front. I would love to stay in this industry, if not as a singer then maybe as an agent or person who brings others together…maybe one day an intendant!

I’m very ambitious, but I also want to leave something for the next generation and keep opera alive – I think that’s the biggest challenge, finding our audience of the future. We need to try out lots of different strategies, and perhaps more collaborations across the opera world…I don’t know the answer yet, but hopefully we will find out together!