Glyndebourne’s new ‘Carmen’ is inspired by Iranian women

Carmen is the quintessential opera — and yet it’s not really about the title character. The principal protagonist is Don José, who in Prosper Mérimée’s original novella is based on a ruffian awaiting execution for the murder of a gypsy. The author interviewed him and found he had killed before. But, giving the story a romantic twist, Mérimée turns him into Don José, a corporal in the military who finds himself bemused and eventually besotted by the fiery gypsy Carmen. This is the story that Georges Bizet transformed into perhaps the best loved opera of them all.

No longer does Don José wish to return home to marry the local lass Michaëla, who searches him out to deliver a letter from his mother. He has seen freedom in the person of Carmen, and lacks the imagination to create an independent life for himself, free of his mother. He is now torn, by duty to the military and guilt towards his mother, an invisible figure (who in the recent Covent Garden production drifts in and out of the stage).

Unable to find a way out of the trap he has found himself in, José joins the band of gypsy smugglers around Carmen, and then loses her to the attractive toreador Escamillo. Thoroughly discombobulated, he loses himself, and kills Carmen outside the bullring where the toreador wins his bullfight. Despite the knife fight with Escamillo, the murder of Carmen is done by brute strength — a visceral moment.

This new production by Diane Paulus, director of the American Repertory Theatre, represents her Glyndebourne debut. Apparently Carmen was the first opera her parents took her to see as a child, and she became fascinated with the work. For her it is about the empowerment of women as much as the downfall of one man, and when first working on it she was “struck by the phenomenal uprising of women in Iran … taking off their hijabs and taking to the streets”. She hopes that “when the curtain comes down, we’re not lulled into any operatic romanticisation of a death, but … in [Carmen’s] death we feel her life force”.

Does Paulus succeed? Largely yes, but some aspects are a bit overdone. Jackets are thrown to the floor in fits of temper, but after the incident when Don José allows Carmen to escape — a skilful piece of manipulation by her — there is a sudden outbreak of violence. The soldiers guarding the cigarette factory, where the women are only allowed out to enter an area caged in on all sides and the top, inflict a brutal attack on him, as if he has suddenly become an enemy in one of the world’s on-going military conflicts. No operatic romanticisation here, but how come a bunch of low-level guards feel entitled to beat the hell out a non-commissioned officer in such dubious circumstances?

Good sets: I liked the modern lighting for Lillas Pastia’s club in Act II, though the lighting for the sunset in Act III rather oddly followed the topography of a mountainous landscape. Otherwise the lighting by Malcolm Rippeth was excellent, and the bodybuilder appearance of the toreador Escamillo, strongly sung by Russian bass-baritone Dmitry Cheblykov, moved us away from the specific location of Spain.

The Ukrainian tenor Dmytro Popov made a fine Don José, if somewhat lacking in the anguish that leads him to kill the assertive and strongly sung Carmen of Rihab Chaieb. Very fine singing from Russian soprano Sofia Fomina as Michaëla, and Dingle Yandell as Lieutenant Zuniga was superb. Musically this was a performance of great energy under the baton of music director Robin Ticciati, with the London Philharmonic providing excellent precision, and commencing with a delightful fast tempo to set the mood.

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