Carmen: It ain’t over till the nude lady sings

A lusty new production of 'Carmen' by Calixto Bieito embraces the growing trend for red-hot opera

Carmen gets her kit off
Carmen unleashed: the heroine of English National Opera's new production is scantily clad and struts her stuff around a car park Credit: Photo: SPRINGS

Opera buffs have been noticing for a while that there’s a lot more buff at the opera. The fleshier the production, the more attention it gets – and now, 134 years after her first appearance on the London stage, comes the Carmen we are supposed to have been waiting for.

Forget the traditional Sevillan castanet clacker, shimmying in tiered skirts with a rose between her teeth. The heroine of the English National Opera’s new show is scantily clad, “sexy and sensual”, and struts her stuff in a darkened city centre car park pursued by a horde of panting squaddies.

Traditionalists should have feared the worst when word leaked out that the world’s favourite opera was being given the treatment by bullet-headed Spanish bad boy Calixto Bieito – a director described, not entirely pejoratively, as the Quentin Tarantino of the stage.

Bieito’s notoriety was established with his 2002 ENO production of Verdi’s A Masked Ball, in which the curtain rose on a scene featuring 14 men sitting in a public toilet with their trousers around their ankles. A year later, he put on Macbeth at the Barbican with the familiar Highland settings replaced by what appeared to be a Costa del Sol tourist strip and Lady Macbeth table-dancing to karaoke music.

Carmen appears to have escaped relatively lightly. Critics have been generally polite about the show, and the ENO – on a frantic drive to draw younger, less stuffy audiences through its doors – claims it is one you could happily take your mother to. Anyway, it argues, Georges Bizet’s enduringly popular work was always intended to scandalise.

There is some truth in this. When Carmen opened in Paris in March 1875, it met with a vitriolic response from critics and audiences. The piece was accused of glorifying the immorality of the lower social orders, and the lead character was described by one reviewer as “the very incarnation of vice”. Behind the scenes, the orchestra was in revolt – claiming the work was beneath their dignity – and one of the opera house’s directors resigned in protest.

Bizet, a Parisian wigmaker’s son, short of money, deserted by his wife and in desperate need of a big hit, was distraught. “Don’t you see, all these bourgeois have not understood a single word I have written,” he huffed as the stony-faced audience stomped out of the Opéra-Comique. Three months later, having rashly gone for a refreshing morning swim in the River Seine, he contracted a severe throat infection, developed a fever and suffered a fatal heart attack aged 37.

It was little consolation that then – as now – the whiff of scandal worked a peculiar magic. Attracted by a growing buzz about Carmen in the arty, bohemian world of beaux-arts Paris, the crowds had been flocking to the show. More than 5,000 fans turned out of Georges’ funeral in Montmartre, and after a special commemorative performance of the opera, the critics who had panned the show declared it to be a masterpiece.

There has been general agreement on this ever since. But not about why. It is easy to see Carmen as the tart with a heart, rolling cigarillos against her sweaty thighs, flicking her hips and bringing to mass audiences a sentimental whiff of sangria and sunshine. The songs are ripe, seductive and instantly memorable.

But Carmen has also been adopted as everything from a propaganda tool to a feminist icon, and through all the smoke and dazzle that surrounds the character it is difficult to agree on who she really is.

Bizet’s inspiration came from a novel written by French author Prosper Mérimée, published in 1845. It tells the story of a small-time crook, Don José, who washes up in Seville, where he becomes a soldier and meets Carmen, a hot and headstrong gypsy girl who works in a cigarette factory he has been sent to guard. Besotted, Don José begs Carmen to move to America with him to start a new life, but she resists, saying: “Carmen will always be free.” Soon he discovers she has fallen for Lucas, a handsome picador, and kills her in a jealous rage. After which, the book eccentrically subsides into a big, fat pro-gypsy plea for understanding of alternative lifestyles.

What does all this mean? And does Bizet’s version amplify or negate the point of the book? Feminists have tended to seize on the “Carmen is not only free but a victim of domestic violence” theme, although Franco’s Spain was equally adept as touting her as an example of traditional Spanish womanhood. Author and stage director Salvador Tvora, who has written extensively about the cult of Carmen, says: “There was no single Carmen. She is the result of the experiences of many women who were fighting for the freedom to work, or who had affairs with a toreador or a soldier. It’s many histories in one – one myth born of many women.

“The way she is traditionally seen is a prostitute, but the real Carmen was something different. She was a woman who worked for a living. Many Sevillanas feel bad because the image of the cigar-maker has been tarnished by that of the prostitute.”

Bizet may have been ahead of his time, but the opera world has been catching up fast. Sex in this once most-refined of genres has gone mainstream, and while raucous cries of “geremoff, Brünnhilde” are yet to fill the air at Covent Garden, there is no doubt opera has shed its inhibitions. In the last few years, Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House has featured a nude orgy, while New York’s Met has been treated to soprano Karita Mattila performing a naked Salome, and Sydney’s Don Giovanni featured the hero jumping out of a shower wearing only a flesh-coloured codpiece.

If the critics are praising the restraint of the ENO’s new Carmen, it can only be because Bieito’s production has fallen behind the pace. Fortunately, there is lots left to do with Carmen. Including trying to understand who she really was.