And against the dizzying vortex created by the meticulous direction, under the baton of an unbridled Pablo Heras-Casado, the eternal dance of love-unto-death plays out once more. Visionary director Dmitri Tcherniakov’s take on it promises some strong emotions as, like Mérimée, he shows us Carmen through the eyes of José. Although it has become the most popular opera in the world, Carmen – like any universal masterpiece – can still benefit from an innovative approach.
But a myth is open to an infinite number of possible readings. Georges Bizets captivating music with its Spanish sounds took the world by storm: Carmens Habanera and Seguidilla, like Escamillos Toreadors Song. Around these two syllables Prosper Mérimée built a novella that Georges Bizet used to create a character that his opera would turn into a myth: that of a free woman who heeds her desires without worrying about propriety, and who is condemned to end up stabbed to death by a deserter consumed by passion.
Music : Georges Bizet - (1838 - 1875) Libretto : Henri Meilhac. She is the ally of love – that rebellious bird and gypsy’s child she resembles so much. Opera in four acts (1875) After Prosper Mérimée. This sometime cigar-maker, sometime smuggler with something of the sorceress about her is often in love – as capable of making a deserter of the sergeant Don José as she is of wooing the toreador, Escamillo. For the Danish stage director, this “opera about destiny and obsession” centres on “two people who are treated as outsiders, whose paths cross and who cling to each other in a passionate but unhealthy relationship”.Free she was born and free she will die. In collaboration with the stage director Kasper Holten, Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House in London, she has also worked at opera houses in Helsinki and Copenhagen, at the Theater an der Wien and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. She has designed sets for pop stars like Adele, U2, Take That, the Pet Shop Boys and Kanye West. The French composer‘s most successful opera is staged on the world’s largest, spectacular floating stage of Lake Constance in Bregenz, with a set designed by British artist Es Devlin. Georges Bizet‘s captivating music with its Spanish sounds took the world by storm: Carmen‘s Habanera and Seguidilla, like Escamillo‘s Toreador‘s Song, are known to one and all. Galle Arquez as Carmen in Barrie Koskys production of Bizets Carmen, The Royal Opera Season 2017/18.
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