Playwright Simon Stephens on how the characters and music of Carmen inspired his play about love, loss and emptiness. T he first time I listened to an opera I was sitting on the District Line. It was two years ago. Music is the most important art form to me as a writer and as a human being. But classical music was not part of the culture I was born into. But I had never heard an opera before that tube journey. He became fascinated by her life. He asked me if I wanted to write it.
Her candid descriptions of the politics and sexuality and loneliness of an international opera singer were felt and compassionate. Her description of her life in transit resonated. In the UK stage actors will rehearse for four or even five weeks. In Germany there can be as long as a two month-rehearsal period. But Rinat more often goes on stage after just 24 hours preparation. Through this remarkable process she has come to know every moment of that rich, remarkable score. When I first saw the score in a rehearsal room, all pages of it, my mind reeled.
How Rinat was able to contain so much staggered me. How any human was able to imagine so much floored me. Rinat has also developed a fascinating association with this character she keeps returning to. She looks like an archetypal Carmen.
Thick black curly hair falls over her shoulders and her eyes are alight with mischief. She has a committed faith in psychic communication and the inexorability of fate. She also has a fascination with the human drives for love and sexuality. Such drives define the politics of the opera world, she says. The blurring between the world on stage and the world off stage resonated with me.
It resonated more when she talked about the dislocations of her international life. In a globalised world where all urban spaces reflect one another, where hotel rooms look the same wherever they are and all airport check-in lounges are identical surely it becomes increasingly difficult for this contemporary nomad to know which city she is even in any more.
