‘It's a high-wire act. Every choice matters': Danielle de Niese takes on opera's most notorious femme fatale

The Guardian

3 days ago

Not a flounce, ruffle or rose clenched between teeth is in sight when Danielle de Niese sashays onstage as Carmen – dressed in a boiler suit. The Australian-born lyric soprano's Carmen will not be the Gypsy seductress audiences have come to expect. In Opera Australia's new production, set in present-day Seville, she is a grounded woman ending another long shift in a cigarette factory.
She loosens the fastenings around the neck of her uniform – a glimpse of glistening shoulder, an arch of the back and throat. To her female co-workers, she is hot, exhausted and stiff. To the lads waiting and watching, she is something else.
'Through the male gaze, something functional can appear alluring,' De Niese says. 'To the males watching that moment becomes charged.'
De Niese, speaking to the Guardian in June shortly after arriving in the country to begin rehearsals for her debut performance in the Bizet opera, says her iteration of Carmen has not emerged out of a desire to 'just do something different for the sake of it'.
'I just want every word, every gesture, to feel believable. That's the only thing that matters.'
Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning
For years, De Niese's fans had nudged her toward Carmen – a natural fit, they assumed, for a sultry-looking soprano known as much for her theatrical flair as her vocal precision. But until now she had resisted the obvious casting.
'It wasn't about the aria's reputation,' she says of the instantly recognisable Habanera, Carmen's opening solo. 'It was the story in the lyrics that really caught me. I realised I'd never actually listened to them before – not really.'
What drew her in was the way Carmen's fate is foretold in her first few lines: Love is a rebellious bird / That no one can tame. 'We hear the Habanera and think, 'Oh here she comes, the femme fatale.' But the text is full of foreboding. It's a warning. That's what I wanted to tell – not just the song, but the story.'
In this new take on Carmen, directed by Melbourne Theatre Company's Anne-Louise Sarks, cliches are both acknowledged and upended. In one sequence, the ensemble parades through a surreal Carmen-themed carnival, donning the very stereotypes the opera has long perpetuated – mantillas, castanets, off-the-shoulder peasant blouses.
But the Carmen in this production is emotionally complex – proud, spirited and caught in a love that corrodes as much as it consumes.
'I'm really interested in the kind of love that can unravel you,' De Niese says. 'The kind that starts as passion and turns into something toxic – and you don't see it happening until you've lost yourself.'
This is the challenge De Niese has set herself: not to reinvent Carmen, but to restore her complexity.
'I don't want her to be a cool enigma,' she says. 'I want her to feel like someone you know. Someone whose choices you understand, even if you don't agree with them.'
She points to the recent testimony of singer Cassie Ventura in her case against her ex-boyfriend Sean 'Diddy' Combs as a contemporary example of 'those emotional entanglements, that blurring of control and desire. That's very real. And very now.'
To an outsider looking in, De Niese's own life appears less than real, more like a fairytale. Born in Melbourne to Sri Lankan parents, her first taste of fame came early, becoming Young Talent Time Discovery Quest's youngest ever winner at the age of nine in 1988.
The family moved to Los Angeles, and at the age of 16, De Niese won an Emmy for her role as a regular guest host of the TV program LA Kids. By then, the child prodigy had already made her operatic debut with the Los Angeles Opera. At 19 she was singing Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera.
Seven years later, she wowed audiences as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare at the prestigious Glyndebourne festival. Marriage to Gus Christie, the third generation of Christies to own and operate Glyndebourne, followed.
Her life as lady of the manor at the historic English estate is 'idyllic', she admits, but it took a bit of work initially to be accepted by elitists as something more than an American interloper. She was interrogated about her knowledge of cricket – amusing she concedes, given her Australian and Sri Lankan backgrounds – and pilloried when the last of Glyndebourne's famous dynasty of pugs died and she replaced them with bulldogs and Portuguese waterdogs.
Today, she graciously wears the New York Times title of 'opera's coolest soprano', and in 2023 Tatler named her as one of Britain's 25 best dressed.
'People see the highlights and think it was all silver platter,' she says. But her career, she insists, has not been filled with shortcuts: 'I've been the tortoise, not the hare. I've taken risks, yes, but every step, slow. Every choice, deliberate.'
That discipline has preserved her voice – and allowed it to evolve. 'Ten years ago, I couldn't have sung Carmen,' she says. 'Now it sits perfectly. My voice has broadened, darkened. It feels like it's grown into its home.'
As Carmen, she intends to do just that. Not an archetype, not a cautionary tale – but a woman, vivid and vulnerable, stepping out from the smoke, fully alive.
'Opera is a high-wire act,' she says. 'Every choice matters. But the most important one is this: tell the story like it's happening for the first time. Make it real.'
Opera Australia's Carmen runs until 19 September at Sydney Opera House; and from 15-25 November at Regent Theatre, Melbourne