Review of Carmen by ENB at Sadlers’ Wells Theatre, Friday 5 April 2024
Poster by Prudent-Louis Leray for Carmen’s première. Published by Choudens Pére et Fils and Imp. Lemercier et Cie
Is now the right time to glamourize violence towards women?
Review of Carmen by ENB at Sadlers’ Wells Theatre, Friday 5 April 2024
Poster by Prudent-Louis Leray for Carmen’s première. Published by Choudens Pére et Fils and Imp. Lemercier et Cie
Why was Carmen the only classical performance available in Central London on Friday 5 April? Nothing by the ENO at the Coliseum, or an alternative at the Barbican or South Bank. The choice was Carmen – the ‘new’ opera at the Royal Opera House, or Carmen – the ‘new’ ballet, by ENB at Sadler’s Wells.
No dancer can resist the pulse of Carmen – it could never have been kept jealously by the singers. For the audience, it is a blast of Andalusian summer as we emerge from winter, at a time when other favourite international dance companies are not allowed to visit England. With the first notes, our minds fill with an image of the Carmen we might all at some time have wished we could be; without looking beyond the glamour and the costume, the body and adoration. The Swedish choreographer of the new ballet, Johan Inger, promised to take us “deep into the passions and dark undercurrents of the original story.”
The ballet is no longer about a woman named Carmen – it is a portrayal of the inner turmoil of her murderer, Don Jose. There is also a new character introduced – a young teen boy, so now we have a man and a boy displacing Carmen, who is diluted to a Coppelia dancing doll, with no emotional response; an Act 1 Giselle, before the grief; a Clara ambivalent about Christmas toys. The audience doesn’t get to know her, understand her or shed a tear when she is stabbed, quick flick of the wrist, largely obscured – upstage like a bull before he is released into the arena.
Bizet proposed his opera after reading Carmen by Prosper Merimee when he lived in Rome. 3 March 1875 was the night of its premiere, and the critics decried it too immoral to be staged: the fact of Carmen’s sexuality that is, not her murder. Powdered Parisian bourgeoisie were scandalised, still filling the Opera a hundred years post-Bastille. When Bizet died 3 months later, only 30 performances in, working all night at edits on the 1200-page score to ease the challenge for weaker musicians and singers, yet striving for ever greater drama and climax, he could never have believed we’d ask 150 years in the future – why he chose this story. He left no memoir; he probably envisaged composing until he was 70, like his idol Wagner, but he died at half that age. Carmen alone is now performed worldwide, more often than all of Wagner’s operas put together, and Richard Strauss apparently said that if you want to learn how to compose, study Carmen, not Wagner.
In one of the coldest winters ever recorded, Bizet sat huddled in warm clothes, trying to rewrite the orchestra voices battling in his head. He had told friends he believed Carmen to be “full of clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody,” all while exposing the broken human interactions of the struggling poor.
Painters were displaying their new Impressionist art in startup galleries around the city; rejecting the rigged and nepotic selection and censorship process. Victor Hugo braved forceful criticisms in the new free press, demanding the removal of the powerless government. Louis Napoleon himself was weakened after losing the war with Prussia and ordered troops onto the streets of Paris to quell domestic strikes. Soldiers hobbled wounded and the Paris Commune took hold briefly, only to be violently crushed. It feels dark and dangerous, a mix of Hogarth and Dickens (to the Londoners), but with ever taller Les Mis barricades; and this is where Carmen was born to Bizet. Not in the sweltering, orange perfume of Seville, which Bizet never got to visit. This story could only ever be a tragedy.
The vivacity comes from Bizet’s own music, inspired by tales of the beauty and confidence of both women and men walking the Andalusian streets; and the sequined ‘glamour’ and heroics of Spain’s own amphitheatres – the bullrings. The relationships on show there are never equal: stabbed, blinded and bleeding bull versus armed man. And so, Don Jose stabs Carmen, not because he is a bullfighter, it is she who wears red, but because he caught her having sex with the Toreador and sees her striding past with a sequined jacket adorning her shoulders. Because he cannot have her, so nobody else will.
The disappointment of Carmen’s own role being reduced to a fleeting, short red-dress in the plot of this ballet, is echoed in the newly commissioned sound effect of prolonged scraping, to convey Orwellian dystopia. Yet the heart still leaps with recognition of the key pieces from Bizet’s opera, transcribed from song to instruments – warm woodwinds, flute for Carmen, reminding us of the joy we had paid to feel.
In all there are eight women, in different brightly coloured mini-skirted flamenco dresses. In one scene, they wear flesh-coloured bras to signify toplessness, but it did not seem necessary to the plot. No pointe shoes are worn, but it is all ballet, with a few flexed feet and contemporary phrases. Men are dressed as guards or are tie-and-shirt corporate types. The pas de deux and speed rolling across the stage are impressively executed.
Insufficient clues are given to explain the stage set of nine tall, cubed, mirrored, cement ‘wardrobes’. People are either shut inside them or hide behind them, lights shine, then shutters close. Perhaps they are ‘satanic mills’, massive moving furniture to cover the lack of dance.
And then there is the new character, initially bouncing his ball, curious at what the adults are doing around him. This ‘Boy’ is danced by a lead principal ballerina, which itself raises questions. The minimum age to attend this ballet is 12, although for the new version of the opera – only 8[i]. It is not sexually explicit, but the randomness and acceptability of violence may be the reason. The real world is full of extreme porn bombarding young teens. Extremist misogyny in all its forms is streamed on school buses, in classrooms and canteens, by peers.
The ‘Boy’ is a more important character than the woman Carmen, and this hijacking of the ballet’s plot is to warn us of the unstoppable perpetuated violence in society. In the final scene, the Boy stands alone front stage, ripping the head and limbs off the ragdoll Don Jose gave him in a fantasy dream of happy families. No love, no sadness, just dismemberment.
So, full-house on Friday night in two of London’s leading opera and ballet theatres, both showing Carmen. How long will it take to change attitudes and welcome entertainment without violence towards women? However Carmen is presented, it is not a story about the sufferings of a man or boy spot lit before us; there is a murdered woman now offstage, ignored.
Bizet is quoted as writing in 1866: “As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.”[ii]
As more women are encouraged to write, and are offered a voice by generous and enlightened (still-male) editors, the true extent of violence will be revealed. It will be from her point of view, but does that make any difference to the young boys watching it?
3 March 2025 (just before International Women’s Day) is the 150th anniversary of the premiere of Carmen. Should the women of the world unite to demand a change to the ending, like Stalin did with Swan Lake so that Odette did not die and the Soviet workers did not leave the theatre downcast and demotivated? Leo Muscato directed a new version of Carmen at Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence 6 years ago, where Carmen shoots Don Jose.
Bizet wrote this opera in a time of war and desperate pleas for the poor people of the country to be heard. Just as we are now. Truth is truth and the young learn from the old. How do I teach my teenage son anything else?
Tracey Chippendale-Gammell
[1] I refuse to pay £175 upwards for a ticket to see the ROH Carmen. Fortunately, it is being broadcast to cinemas around the UK on 1 May 2024, so for £15, we can watch it and still be home before midnight. It is a very poor substitute to attend anything musical, recorded and filmed, but we do the best we can.
[1] Letter to Edmond Galabert, and G. (October 1866), as quoted in Letters of Composers: An Anthology, 1603-1945 (1946) edited by Gertrude Norman and Miriam Lubell Shrifte, p. 241
[i] I refuse to pay £175 upwards for a ticket to see the ROH Carmen. Fortunately, it is being broadcast to cinemas around the UK on 1 May 2024, so for £15, we can watch it and still be home before midnight. It is a very poor substitute to attend anything musical, recorded and filmed, but we do the best we can.
[ii] Letter to Edmond Galabert, and G. (October 1866), as quoted in Letters of Composers: An Anthology, 1603-1945 (1946) edited by Gertrude Norman and Miriam Lubell Shrifte, p. 241
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