GALA PERFORMANCE- CARMEN

Georges Bizet

SUMMER CLASSICS IN RIJEKA AUTUMN

The Pula Arena was not big enough to receive all those who wanted to see Carmen, which received long-lasting ovations. This is an outstanding production that every opera lover has to see, but it is also each new opera enthusiast who wishes to enter the world of this complex artistic form that can start with the new staging of Carmen in the production of artistic and technical forces of the Ivan pl. Zajc CNT.

Luka Nalis, Fiuman.hr

The final, crucial scene of murder is an everlasting challenge for a director, while Blažević, together with his team, managed to find how to surprise the audience in a meaningful and moving way. Without clubs, without knives or strangulation, the madly in love José destroys his idol with a long kiss. The overpowering passion of the soul, psychologically and physically, on stage and the stands of life, has the same name everywhere – violence.

Rosanna Paliaga, Primorski dnevnik

The director moved away from the clichés imprinted in Bizet’s masterpiece, namely, there is no Spanish exoticism or the search for local characteristics that with the time have become a rhetorical convention only, there are no more or less obvious stereotypes of seduction… Instead, the direction is focused on identifying theatre archetypes contained in this work, offering their quite a happy synthesis that explains the fascination with this opera – constant since 1875, and – present in every audience.

(… ) Blažević’s careful work on the entire balance of this staging is evident primarily through the actors and their expressed corporeity. Mezzosoprano Ivana Srbljan, prominent soloist of the Ivan pl. Zajc CNT, developed a strong-willed and almost masculine protagonist, quite expressive, brusque, confident in singing and with an exceptional ability of transforming the voice…

Giulia Vannoni, Il Ponte