Tonight’s showing of Carmen Jones at Royal Festival Hall has been the closest I’ve come to seeing an opera so far. This musical adaptation of the opera Carmen was supposed to be my pathway to attending a full-scale opera but I’m not sure how much I would be into one after tonight’s showing.

Carmen Jones is set, not in the traditional gypsy setting, but into Cuba during war-times where a parachute maker, a sizzling scarlet woman, lays a trail of broken hearts until she falls in love first with one man and another before it all ends tragically.

There is no doubt that the Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi looked and played the part of Carmen well in her gorgeous outfits (first a beautiful red number and then later on white) however her voice, though no doubt on key, was lost in the huge room at times. The same goes for many of the other singers except X-Factor’s Brenda Edwards whose feet tapping number mid-way through the first half was definitely my favourite performance. My main struggle seemed to be with understanding what was being sung on stage (and actually at times even identifying who was doing the singing.) Sub-titling would have been appreciated!

Operas are supposed to be rather emotional and passionate and though this was a musical adaptation I still expected the same emotion and passion. It seemed to be rather lacking and to be honest none of the characters gain my sympathy. The set didn’t help any and I found it was fairly standard, and dare I saw boring, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra strangely placed smack bang in the middle.

I was hoping for more tonight.