Sir Richard Eyre’s production, first commissioned by the Met for its 2009/2010 season to replace an earlier one by Franco Zeffirelli, has been frequently revived.
Should a production be adapted to reflect the changing mores of the times, and if so, how? Should there be a departure from operatic orthodoxy, such as was done in a 2017 Italian production of Carmen directed by Valentia Carrasco, where the heroine, armed with Don Jose’s gun, killed her tormentor in self-defence before he could kill her? Or does a contemporary rewrite compromise the historical integrity of the work? But in an age in which we are acutely conscious of issues around the abuse and mistreatment of women, the audience’s sympathies no longer lie with the obsessional and possessive perpetrator, but with the victim. The message would have reassured respectable bourgeois audiences, doubtless shocked by the opera’s depiction of working-class immorality. In its original nineteenth-century form, Prosper Mérimée’s novella, on which Bizet based this work, served as a morality tale in which an immoral temptress – a gypsy factory worker and cigarette smoking smuggler to boot – led her naïve lover astray, drove him to the edge of despair, and, as a result, got what was coming to her. Another challenge is how to give a nineteenth-century plot cultural relevance, particularly in relation to what today must be considered the opera’s central theme: the abusive treatment of women by men. Without subtle musical interpretation to bring out the emotions and suffering of the characters, they risk looking wooden. Although orchestrally brilliant, with memorably tuneful areas and choruses, the central characters are, from a dramatic point of view, undeveloped. The work’s popularity obscures the fact that it is possibly one of the most difficult to produce. According to my playbill, this was the Metropolitan Opera’s 1,011 th performance since its U.S. In the opera league tables, Bizet’s Carmen must rank as the most popular ever written.
Wagner praised it, Tchaikovsky predicted its future success, and Brahms declared that he would go to the ends of the earth to embrace its composer. (CSa) Act IV of the Met’s Carmen (c) Marty Sohl/Met Opera United States Bizet, Carmen: Soloists, Dancers, Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera / Omer Meir Wellber (Conductor) Metropolitan Opera, New York.
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