Forget it, link failed 6 times already 

I just got it on the R3 broadcast, will try for the video link tomorrow.  Seems really strange to hear Carmen in English doesn't it?

Does anyone else find the whole thing with this ENO/R3 tie-up a little incestuous and overly gimmicky?   First we had people who were obviously the ENO Marketing Division running whole test-marketing topics on the official BBC R3 board,  talking gushingly about "Sally's concept" etc.   Now we have an online stream, which you can see "not only as if from the audience's perspective in the auditorium, but also from behind the scenes"??   Now there's a gimmick I could live without.  Perhaps I am overly cynical,  but this strikes me as a whole new benchmark in the world of "gonzo productions" - operas that you now have to view from behind the scenery??

It looks like the whole world of operacasts (Metropolitan Opera, Glyndebourne, and now the ENO stagehand's-viewcast) is becoming a "genre" of its own...   another nail in the coffin of the live medium? 

I don't know enough about what happened at Covent Garden in the C19th to say much... but the attitude on this may not have been uniform throughout the period?   Also, there wasn't an "ROH" as we know it today,  as that "role" (of an I"talian Opera by Royal Patent") was the prerogative of the King's Theatre, Haymarket ("Her Majesty's" stands on the site these days) at the beginning of the century. 

AFAIK in the first decades of the C19th, opera actually written in Italian (regardless of the nationality of the composer) was given in Italian, at the King's Theatre, by an exclusive Royal Patent which effectively gave them a "monopoly" on that repertoire.  But everything else (French, German, Austrian, etc) was given in English translation, usually at the Drury Lane Theatre.  For example Dittersdorf's "Doktor und Apotheker" became "The Doctor & Apothecary", and was also foreshortened by around 25-30%...  this was to allow for the prevailing precedent that London audiences expected a Double Bill for their money, and wanted to have a one-act "Afterpiece" comedy after the main piece on the bill.   Somewhere around the house (I've had houseguests and everything is packed away) I've got Kelly's Memoirs...  he was the "Stage Manager" (ie Resident Producer) at the King's Theatre until the 1820's, and the Appendix lists everything they did, including the casts...  so I can check?  This job didn't prevent him presenting "English'd" versions of his own and other works down the road at Drury Lane either...

This question of "patents" was a very important matter in the period - getting around the patent was often the reason for creating an "English" version, with the main numbers retained but new music for other parts either fresh-composed or "borrowed" from other works, so that the result was "substantially different" to the patented work.  One of the very last works to be performed in this odd way was PARSIFAL...  which was premiered in England as a ballet (!), at Oswald Stoll's newly-opened Coliseum Variety Theatre...  the whole thing made up "Act II" of the evening's "variety" bill, and ran for slightly less than an hour...  the score was presumably pirated and rearranged out of a vocal score obtained from Germany?  By presenting a ballet, Stoll avoiding accusation that he'd pirated the "principle airs" of the piece.  Stoll was also on a late-career mission to make "Variety" acceptable to Victorian moral standards and raise the "moral tone" of his programmes sufficiently to achieve his greatest dream...  that His Majesty would attend performances.  This goal was achieved, although regrettably by an ulterior ruse...  the construction of a tiny office in the vestibule to which HRH could slip out and pass the time with chorus-girls until the final curtain. It's still there in the foyer, inside an unfeasibly large triangular "pillar".

Yes, the thought "C'est des contrebandiers le refuge ordinaire" has often gone through my mind at the Blue Boar Services, along with "Oh Seigneur! Sauvez moi!" when I glanced into the "Happy Eater".

Neither, however, made me want to dance the Seguidilla  However, the Derby Road in Portsmouth might be just the place to find Frasquita and Mercedes, fresh off the Santander ferry...

The whole idea of "Carmen in England" strikes me as utterly absurd, but I suppose I will give it a go.  I suppose Lillas Pastia is serving Devonshire Cream Teas in this version? 

You gave me a giggle with those old chestnuts, SWave   Another I remember, primarily for its ungainly musical effect, was "Smite the E-e-e-e-e-thi-o-pi-an in-vad-ers..." ("Su del Ni-lo..") in AIDA.

Ah, so nothing that hasn't been done a million times before, then?    Ho-hum, and an elephant's bum...