1. The Kreutzer Sonata
2. The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice
3. Endgame
4. Annie Get Your Gun
5. Bedroom Farce

Time to meet Ms Jones

On song: Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi, who takes the title role in the musical Carmen Jones, with director Jude Kelly

Look here too

• Rival brothers who sing to win Carmen
• Carmen singer heads for stardom

'Carmen eats up her victims. She's a pathological destroyer,' says Tsakane Valentine Maswanganyi, the striking young soprano starring in a new production of Carmen Jones at the Festival Hall.

'I can understand that. We all have elements of that in ourselves, even if we choose not to use them in everyday life.' She flashes a wide smile. 'That's what I hope to draw on for the role. I want to go as deep as possible.'

It'll be a cracking great show if she does. Oscar Hammerstein's musical Carmen Jones uses Georges Bizet's famous tunes but updates the story of the opera to an all-black community in World War II America.

Carmen is a worker in a parachute factory, the love-struck Don José is a GI, the bullfighter Escamillo becomes the boxer Husky Miller and so on. With its themes of female independence, obsessional love and carnivalesque celebration - not to mention great numbers, such as Beat Out Dat Rhythm On A Drum - it's got everything a musical needs to grab you and whirl you up in the air.

Director Jude Kelly swaps her managerial role as artistic director of the South Bank Centre for more hands-on work in the rehearsal room. She's setting the piece in our own time, in poverty-stricken Latin America.

'It's really a classic and timeless story but I've developed a scenario in which a community is staging its own street performance of Carmen Jones. The look is quite similar to 1940s America in some ways, but really it allows the audience to set it as they wish.'

Kelly stresses that she spent a long time working with the chorus. 'I wanted to create a sense of community, of lives lived outside the stage. The work doesn't refer to much outside its own world - it's not about racial tension, for example - but it's absolutely vital that it is credible.'

Maswanganyi takes up the theme. 'It's so much easier to create a character when you know you are really able to rely on the people around you to support you. The cast is fantastic.'

At the heart of that cast is Maswanganyi herself. She trained as an opera singer in Pretoria and came to London to be part of the opera crossover band Amici Forever.

'There are operatic opportunities in South Africa but, of course, there are so many more here,' she explains.

But Carmen Jones is not an opera. Is she comfortable with the demands of music-theatre? 'In the opera world you get so spoiled in a way, because the music speaks for you. It's true that there's a lot of dialogue and a lot of movement here, but it's a challenge I find exciting,' she replies.

'The music is so expressive, I think this piece is very much in-between opera and musical. It's a fascinating blend to get right.'

With her strikingly beautiful features and lissom figure, Maswanganyi certainly looks like a natural Carmen. Is that what impressed Kelly in the audition?

'My first consideration was to find someone who could sing the role. As in opera, if you don't believe in the voice in this piece, the whole thing falls apart. That was the most important thing,' she says.

'And while I don't think Carmen has to be obviously attractive, I do think she has to be fearlessly confident about herself - and totally at ease with that.

'I was also looking for intelligence, for someone who could create a three-dimensional psychological journey.'

When I interviewed Kelly a few weeks ago about the reopening of the Festival Hall, she said she wanted to see what it was like working as a director in her own institution. How is she finding it?

'It's early days. We still haven't gone into the Festival Hall. But the semi-staging of Sweeney Todd was a chance to see how the building can cope.'

It seemed to me there were some problems with amplification during Sweeney. Have those been ironed out?

'We're still learning things all the time about the new hall, about how it responds to the voice. But yes, I think we're well on track.

There are still very few black faces in opera and musicals. Was it difficult to cast an all-black piece? 'We had 480 people auditioning and I hope we'll be able to work with many of them on some other occasion,' Kelly replies.

'But there's still a problem with opportunity for black performers. If Pretoria (Tshwane) can have a school for black singers, why can't we?'

Opportunity has come knocking in Carmen Jones, at least, which has offered Maswanganyi a chance of stardom. Somehow, I think it's a chance she'll take.

Carmen Jones previews from Jul 25 and opens Jul 31 until Sep 2, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank SE1, Tue to Sat 7.30pm, Wed, Sat and Sun mats 2.30pm, £14 to £49.
Tel: 0870 380 0400.
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Tube: Waterloo/Embankment

What's on today   What's on tomorrow

Receive our newsletter