Carmen - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Carmen

Staging
Calixto Bieito
Scenic rehearsal
Joan Anton Rechi
stage
Alfons Flores
Costumes
Mercè Paloma
light
Alberto Rodriguez Vega

It is a story full of misunderstandings: love is confused with desire, an affair with an exclusive relationship, affection with possession, and violence with passion. But the highest price in this web of dysfunctional connections pays Carmen - a woman who loves her independence more than anything else, men included. Her murderer is the conscientious soldier Don José, who until now only had eyes for his mother and the young Micaëla, with whom he grew up together. But when he becomes aware of Carmen, the worker who is so sought after by all his comrades, it has happened to him too. After Carmen's arrest due to a bloody physical abuse, José enables her to escape and follows her into illegality, both of whom now live in a smugglers' gang. But when living together, José puts Carmen under pressure with his jealousy and loses her affection. When he returns from a visit to his mother, he finds that Carmen now loves the successful bullfighter Escamillo. Although Carmen is aware of José's tendency towards uncontrolled violence, she faces the confrontation. While Escamillo hunted down a bull in the arena, José stabbed his former girlfriend in the forecourt.

The fact that the opera only plays in the lower classes of society, among soldiers, smugglers, Spanish Roma and factory workers, was shocking to the Parisian audience at the premiere in 1875. The fact that the dying heroine was refused a farewell aria was felt to be an expression of harshness and violence. Only with the series of performances in Vienna did Carmen's triumphant advance begin in the same year. Two musical motifs characterize the opera: the self-confident refrain of the famous "Toréador" song and a mysterious, dark motif that is connected to Carmen's premature and violent death, which she perceives as fateful. When the victorious torero is cheered in the bullring in the finale, while the stabbed Carmen collapses in front of her gates, the two melodies come together.

The literary source of the opera - a novel of the same name by Prosper Mérimée - shows Carmen as a morally depraved person who ruthlessly exploits men for their own ends or even lures them into deadly traps. Georges Bizet and his librettists, on the other hand, transformed their main character into a fascinating woman who is so attractive to men precisely because she refuses traditional ideas. Not with her appearance, but with her voice, she draws Don José's attention to herself by singing a habanera, a dance song of African American origin: "L’amour est un oiseau rebelle" ("Love is a rebellious bird"). Carmen's dazzling and unadapted personality is reflected in her vocal part, which is as powerful as it is tender.

The figure of Micaëla does not exist in the literary model; it was invented by Bizet and his librettists as a counter-figure to Carmen. The music portrays her as gentle instead of quick-tempered, as indulgent and familiar instead of demanding and strange: her love and the love of José's mother, whose messenger she acts, can hardly be separated. But Micaëla also has another, courageous and strong side, which becomes apparent at the latest when she overcomes her fear and follows Don José on his astray in order to separate him from the smugglers' gang and bind him to her. It remains to be seen whether she is telling the truth when she persuades Don José to come along by claiming that his mother is dying.

After Calixto Bieito became famous as a theater director, Carmen was his first major opera directing work in 1999. Since then he has revised and refined this legendary production several times. For him, Carmen is neither the male fantasy of a femme fatale nor a symbol of emancipation, but an individual personality. Bieito shows the world of soldiers, workers and crooks in a Spanish border area free of »gypsy« kitsch and cliché images; Flamenco is only quoted ironically among Carmen's friends. But the bullfight is just as much a living tradition as it is a symbol of the fight between two people - or is it the other way around? Incidentally, this production is also a declaration of love from the director to the people of his home country.

Subject to changes.

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