Is Carmen a Free Spirit and Wild Child, or just a Conniving Bitch? Justina Gringyte’s performance leaves the question open in Benjamin Davis’ revival of Scottish Opera’s co-production with Welsh National Opera.

The way the characters bandy the word ‘love’ around, it is less than certain that they are all meaning the same thing. And the fairly minimalist set throws the words into prominence.

Micaëla’s is probably the least complicated love. Nadine Livingston is a rather frumpy country girl, in her neat blue skirt and jacket, come to bring gifts and messages from his mother to Don José. The fervour with which she psyches herself up in ‘Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante’ to face down Carmen is utterly convincing.

Don José, on the other hand, is clearly infatuated with Carmen and, when put to guard her and take her to prison, becomes putty in her hands. Noah Stewart plays a man out of his depth emotionally – right at the end, when Carmen is wrenching his ring from her finger, his nervous twitchiness is heart-rending. Both his ‘will I go or will I stay now’ swithering between his infatuation with Carmen and his army duty and the showdown with the rather drunk lieutenant Zuniga are impressive.

Timothy Dickinson’s Zuniga has the least complicated feeling about Carmen – and it’s hardly love as Micaëla knows it. For Escamillo (Roland Wood), Carmen is probably just arm-candy – he tells Don José her affairs only last six months, so he knows how long he has got her. He is appropriately swaggering in voice as in gait, accepting the adulation of the crowd.

Carmen’s friends Frasquita (Ellie Laugharne) and Mercédès (Marie Claire Breen) are nearly as feline as Carmen. Their quintet ‘Nous avons en tête une affaire’ in Lilla Pastia’s tavern with the rakish smugglers Le Dancaire (Andrew Dickinson) and Le Remendado (Nicholas Sharratt) is slick and very conversational.

The children’s chorus is excellent – one sympathises with the guard putting up with that teasing on a regular basis. They are at the front of the crowd for the parade of bullfighters, bouncing up and down with excitement as they are held back by a rope. The slo-mo actions of both children and adult chorus during the orchestral sections of ‘Les voici, voici la quadrille’ add to the intensity of the moment.

Whether joshing soldiers and factory-girls, smugglers or bullfight fans, the chorus sounds large and lively.

The orchestra sounded a tad unbalanced momentarily in the overture but otherwise conductor David Parry kept the music driving inexorably to its conclusion, while allowing the space for the sweet melodies to come out in the interludes.

Christian  Fenouilliat’s sets with Turneresque backcloth, low light (being pre-electric) and drifting mist – or is it smoke from industrial Seville – intensifies the atmosphere. Robert B Dickson lights the final meeting of Carmen and Don José dramatically, with a red mist.
But it’s still Carmen’s opera, and Gringyte is as irresistibly languorous, liquid and sensuous – and impetuous – as surely any heterosexual man could wish.