English Touring Opera

English Touring Opera start their Autumn tour next week with performances of Carmen and Rusalka at the Hackney Empire, before visiting 9 other venues.

Rusalka will be given using Iain Farrington's chamber orchestra version which he created for the 2005 Iford Festival. Rusalka seems to be having something of a Fringe revival because it was done at Grange Park this summer. For the ETO production, director James Conway is setting it in Haiti with Jezibaba as a Voodoo Priestess. As locale's go, it is certainly an interesting solution to the problem of realism v. fairy tale in the opera. Jezibaba will be Fiona Kimm with Donna Bateman as Rusalka.

For Carmen ETO have turned to Peter Brook's derangement of the opera, which concentrates on just the 4 principals. I've never seen this live, so I am looking forward to it with interest (and a health degree of scepticism, I must admit).