Carmen

James Hurley, Director of Carmen, shares his inspiration and aspirations for our headline opera…

What should our audience expect from your production of Carmen?

From our first conversations, Ollie [Gooch] was keen that our production acknowledged the opera’s roots as a French opéra-comique. As was traditional in Bizet’s time, we have cast the roles of Frasquita and Mercedes as sopranos, and the roles of Remendado and Dancairo as tenors. We have also restored a comic pantomime to Act 1 - the Scène de l’anglais - which was staged at the opera’s first performances but is rarely (if ever!) performed in modern productions.

Opéra-comique was born from the “theatre of the fair” in Paris and we have leant into the genre’s origins as popular entertainment to re-imagine the character of Carmen as a Spanish street performer, eking out a living with an impoverished troupe of comic players on the streets of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century.

What was the inspiration behind the setting?

Besides the playful spirit of the opéra-comique, we were inspired by the real-life Spanish actress, dancer, and courtesan, Agustina del Carmen Otero Iglesias - better known as La Belle Otero. Agustina travelled to France from Spain at the age of 20 to promote her dancing career and portrayed herself as an Andalusian Romani woman, becoming a star of Folies Bèrgere productions in Paris.

Depicting Carmen as a young Spanish performer, who uses her heritage and traditions to craft an intoxicating stage persona for a French audience, offers a unique theatrical motivation for the ‘pastiches’ of Spanish and ‘gypsy’ music which pulse through Bizet’s score - and Carmen’s music in particular.

How does the setting and design affect the story?

The fundamental dynamics and beats of the story will remain the same but we are transposing the first three acts from Spain to locations in and around Paris.

Despite the apparent ubiquity of Seville in the opera, there are in fact only two direct references to the city in the sung libretto and the most famous of these - “Près des remparts de Séville…” (“Near the walls of Seville…”) from the first line of Carmen’s Seguidilla - is actually replaced in Bizet’s manuscript orchestral score with the line: “J’irai dimance en voiture…” (“I’ll go by coach on Sunday…”).

Act 1 in our production will take place in a square in the centre of Paris, near to the “À La Civette” tobacco shop, which has been in business in the city for over 300 years. Act 2 will unfold at a bar at the Porte de Lilas, a city gate at the eastern edge of Paris. While Act 3 will see Carmen - after falling foul of the French police - escape to the French port of Le Havre just north of Paris, where Escamillo offers her travelling papers on a steam ship to take the two of them ‘home’ to Seville for the fourth act...

What moments in the opera are you most looking forward to bringing to the stage?

I’m looking forward to bringing the restored pantomime to life in Act 1, as I’ve never seen this performed onstage before.

The music for this Scène de l’anglais is scored for Morales, accompanied by the chorus, but in our production it will be a sung by a new character - the leader of the travelling players - to quieten the crowd of passers-by and accompany the first street performance by Carmen, Frasquita, and Mercedes: “Attention! chut! attention!... Taissons nous…!”