During her career, the opera singer and owner of a beautiful voice, Kristīne Zadovska, sang Carmen in three productions of Georges Bizet’s most famous opera. “I would have such adventure stories about this role,” Kristīne says with a smile, looking through her photo album. By the way, it was the role of Carmen in the 2001 “Night of Gamblers” that brought the singer the award in the “Best Singer of the Year” category. “Now it’s even a pity that I haven’t counted how many times I’ve sung Carmen,” Kristīne sums up.
She sang her first Carmen in the show directed by director Guntas Gailīš and, as she says, she prepared for it in three weeks: “Gunārs Stade wrote the pronunciation of the French words in front of me, and I learned the role before the audition while walking along Pumpuri beach. In the beginning, Jose was sung by Ingus Peterson, but then the great Chinese tenor Warren Mok appeared in our Opera, and later we traveled with him on long tours of China. I remember them the most, both because at the beginning I was only in the third line-up, but after a while I remained the only Carmen – without any change, and because I almost lost my voice due to the air-conditioned rooms, so once in the hotel I cut the cord of the “condiškas” with scissors , because it was impossible to turn it off.”
A few years later, Kristine sang this role for the second time in the so-called “Swedish Carmen” – a production that the artists themselves called “the homeless Carmen”. About this show and the collaboration with the Swedish director Stefan Valdemars Holmes (the show was conducted by the Polish maestro Tadeusz Wojchowskis), Kristina has no shortage of glorious stories: «In it, my heroine behaved very defiantly and was always working on something, and apparently it was for this reason that Andris [Andris Keišs, dziedātājas dzīvesbiedrs] was very jealous of Jose – Inga Peterson at the premiere banquet. We didn’t do anything like that on stage, but I also had to sing “Habanera” while lying on my back, with my legs facing the choir… In order not to give the choristers an inappropriate view, I had to wear bodysuits and special underwear, but I had to wear a rubber band attached to my leg very quickly to fasten the dagger with which Carmen allegedly cut the veins… After that, Andris said that I played this scene very perfectly – just like an actress!” Christine laughs. By the way, tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko has started to take over the role of Jose in this production, as Ingus Pētersons has slowly given up academic singing.
For the third time, the singer had to play the role of Carmen in Andrej Žagar’s “Carmen”, which takes place in Cuba. “Elina Garanca sang at the premiere, but several mezzo-sopranos guested in this role afterwards. I was still on maternity leave when the play was produced; after that, in my forties, I had to lose weight once in my life so that I could sing Kamen. I still remember how in the final scene I had to wear the tight, white Jennifer Lopez-style pants,” Kristine smiles.
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