Carmen has everything one could wish for in an opera: glorious music with some splendidly familiar arias, a brilliantly dynamic heroine, some snatches of violence and a tragic love affair. Its great popularity, however, often tempts directors to look for some novel way to present it, and that is where I have always had doubts about Calixto Bieito's production.
The opera was first seen in 1875 and is based on a novel written some 30 years before that, but Bieito moves it to more modern times. Originally set in Seville where Carmen works in a tobacco factory, it has moved to a much more militaristic setting around the time of Franco's Spain, with neither Seville nor the tobacco factory mentioned.
With highly undisciplined soldiers and increased violence, the action fits less well with the highly tuneful music. Bieito's opening, in which a drunk stumbles across the stage and performs some sort of magic trick, still mystifies me in its irrelevance. At least Jamie Manton, who directs this revival, modifies some of the extravagances which seem designed solely to shock.
I was unimpressed when a car drove up on stage for little reason other than to emphasize the relative modernity of the production, but when the stage later became cluttered with five cars, I thought it was really overdoing it. Such an idea may have seemed dramatic when first done, but it has become almost standard and seems more a suggestion that the director has run out of good ideas.