Clemency suggests

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‘You’re always learning’

Henrietta Bredin

Wednesday, 23rd April 2008

Henrietta Bredin talks to Sally Burgess about taking on the role of Carmen

‘The other thing that was great about that production was that I was able to be extremely physical. I’m not a trained dancer but I do like moving a lot and I discovered that it actually helps me to sing. I did a production with a ballet company once, with the choreographer Michael Corder, of Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage. I remember him saying in rehearsal, “It would be wonderful if you could run across the stage before you sing that phrase,” and I said, “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that, I’d be out of breath.” He looked a bit disappointed but gave in so easily that I thought, “How pathetic — let me try it.” So I did and it was fantastic, I sang much better.’

Burgess’s unfettered, loosely natural style of movement was a notable feature of her interpretation of Carmen, pounced upon with glee by director David Pountney, who suggested that she take a course of flamenco lessons. ‘I really enjoyed that but trying to play the castanets at the same time was a complete nightmare. In the end we worked out a way for me to produce the sound and rhythm with my feet instead. Quite late on in rehearsals I was doing my bit and was just thinking I’d managed it really well when Mark Elder, who was conducting, looked up and said, “Do you really have to do all that stamping?” I remember striding down to the front of the stage and saying, “Look, I’ve been working on this for months and I’m not going to cut it now.” The stamping stayed in, as did a lot of rolling around on the bonnets of cars, and a memorably wanton way with foodstuffs, which even got picked up by the tabloids. I think it was in the Mirror, they had a huge photograph of me and the headline was “Crisp-eating temptress”. What a laugh! I loved that.’

The production, which was originally intended as a one-off, throwaway show, with a brilliant design by Maria Bjørnson consisting of heaps of rubbish, wrecked cars and sleazy peeling advertising hoardings, turned out to be a considerable success and was revived a number of times. Burgess became a Carmen in demand. ‘I sang it at Opera North next, in French, with an amazing language coach from Leeds University who went over and over the dialogue — we did all of it, reams of the stuff — and wouldn’t let us get away with the slightest mispronounciation. Then there was a massive out door production in Bregenz, on the lake stage. That was extraordinary, with multiple casts. There were four Carmens, can you imagine? It was all very jolly at the start but then, when it came to the crunch, people became quite competitive. One of the singers was rather grand and stately and she got a bit hysterical about all the livestock in the show — goats with jangling bells and horses rattling their harnesses.’