By Debbie Cuthbertson
There's a kaleidoscope of brightly costumed chorus members spilling into the hallway backstage at Arts Centre Melbourne as the chorus from Opera Australia's new production of Carmen breaks from a dress rehearsal.
As I weave through the empty State Theatre stalls, the strains of the Toreador Song spill from the orchestra pit as John Bell stands on the stage.
John Bell on the set of his Opera Australia production of Carmen in the State Theatre.Credit: Josh Robenstone
The director, best known as the founder of theatre company Bell Shakespeare, is putting the finishing touches on the Melbourne premiere of his reinterpretation of Bizet's classic. He has just a few days of rehearsal before the opening night of the Melbourne autumn season.
"It's a pretty short rehearsal time, very quick, so we're racing the clock," he says, full of praise for Roger Press, who has pulled together the revival of Bell's show, which premiered in Sydney last year.
The Cubano-flavoured Opera Australia chorus in Carmen.Credit: Keith Saunders
The Melbourne run features different principles, including Rinat Shaham as Carmen and Dmytro Popov as Don Jose, and much of the chorus.
Opera demands a different way of working for a theatre veteran like Bell.
"In opera they all arrive knowing the score, knowing their parts. This is [the company's] 46th production of Carmen, so they know it inside out.
"You're working backwards in a way: why are they doing these things? What's the motivation? What's it all about? There's the finished product – how did they get there?"
Michael Scott-Mitchell's set resembles a rundown art deco-era residential square, replicating the faded glamour of Cuba.
This reimagining of Carmen takes place not in Havana, Bell stresses, but a fictional place reminiscent of the Cuban capital. "It's inspired by Cuba," he says.
"There's a production of Carmen already in the repertoire ... There's no point replicating that."
"But this is a way to get away from the flamenco dancers and the toreadors and all that luggage that comes with Carmen.
"Cuba has a slightly retro feel about it, a decaying sense of corruption, and the sporting people and the police and gangsters all meet and rub shoulders.
"It's a very credible sort of society to set the story in and just means we have a different kind of choreography, a different body language than if we were doing a traditional production."
"It's quite contemporary, but its got a slightly retro feel about it, like the '50s in a sense ... like Havana."
Yet he says the revival still keeps the spirit and core of the story, which traditionally takes place in Seville.
"I think the thing I find about Carmen that's so interesting is that these two people with a death wish, they both choose the person who is going to destroy them ultimately, but they can't resist choosing that person.," he says of the leads.
"And why we do that, why people do it, is a mystery, but it's such a common thing, to choose a partner who's wrong for you.
"The obsessiveness and possessiveness, it's very real and very telling. They're two quite intelligent people and they make very deliberately bad choices, I find that really fascinating."
Since leaving Bell Shakespeare, the theatre company he founded in 1990 (whose critically-acclaimed Richard III is now also at the Arts Centre, in the Fairfax Studio), Bell has taken on a number of roles both on stage and behind the scenes.
In addition to directing, he's worked on musical projects (reading Beethoven's letters with the Tinalley Quartet) and even doing a spot of corporate public speaking.
He'll soon be back on stage too, rather than behind the scenes, acting in The Father, at Sydney Theatre Company in August and Melbourne Theatre Company in November.
"It is full, it is a lot to be going on with but I'm enjoying it all, lots of variety and no responsibility."
Opera Australia's Carmen is at the State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, May 4-26.