Georges Bizet - Carmen
Salzburger Festspiele, 2026
Teodor Currentzis, Gabriela Carrizo, Asmik Grigorian, Jonathan Tetelman, Kristina Mkhitaryan, Davide Luciano, Iveta Simonyan, Anita Monserrat, Matthias Winckhler, Liviu Holender, Michael Arivony, Mingjie Lei
ARTE Concert - 8th August 2026
If Carmen can't speak of the world around you today, what is the point of it? That must be the challenge for any director, opera house or festival choosing to present it on the modern stage. Much as some might like to live in the past, there is no room surely for the glamorising of violence and bloodshed, for the murder of gypsy girls, for valiant toreadors or any of the stock cliches that present the work as nothing more than an operatic entertainment. Carmen can be and should be more than this. Any opera worth its salt should be able to continue to resonate and tell us something about love, life, death and humanity. Salzburg, it has to be said, go out on a limb by handing it over to first time opera director and dance choreographer Gabriela Carrizo (Peeping Tom), but there is no question that it results in a viscerally striking and visually arresting account with not even the suggestion of any old-fashioned operatic mannerisms. There is still life, love and humanity in Carmen, and plenty of death too of course.
While the familiar strains of the overture and first scene of this production of Carmen are playing however, instead of humming along and tapping your foot, you're more likely to be focussed on identifying where this adaptation of the opera is taking place. The uniforms of the officers are fairly generic, the landscape is one of smooth rises of angular grey stone, the setting dark, very dark. We are far from the colour and sun of Andalucía. One thing that is clear is that it's a brutal world, for women particularly, so we are at least on familiar ground there. The first scene shows two men dumping a body over the edge of the hill, the next, beating up a vagabond thief in their midst. One of the guards teaches a young boy to use his gun and have some fun shooting his school friends.
The other thing you might note as characteristic of the setting is that they no longer appear to have soap or detergents. Everyone is covered in grime and dust, the uniforms filthy, the children are all grubby and unwashed. Sadly, it looks like they might have recently been putting out wildfires that have devastated the Andalusian landscape in these months; that sunset glow when the workers are leaving the factory might also be the approach of the continuing fires. I'm not sure Carmen is the place for eco awareness and climate change warnings - and that doesn't turn out to be the theme of this production - but at least it isn't mired in the usual cliches. Well, not the usual colourful seductive Carmen scene-setting ones anyway, which I suppose is what is really being avoided here.
Not that 'post-apocalypse' is any more original at the moment, but the aim of this one doesn't appear to be concerned with alerting us to climate change devastation, more 'post morality' maybe, which is certainly another worrying direction humanity seems to be heading in. The people here seem to be living on the edge of a volcano or one where another outbreak of smouldering ash could reignite at any moment. You could certainly apply that description to Bizet's music anyway, and Teodor Currentzis doesn't hold back from the full-on dynamic of the score here at Salzburg, stripping it of any romanticised account of gypsy melodies. This Carmen is loud, fast, aggressive and muscularly masculine, any notion of tenderness is quickly quashed. An almost frenzied seguidilla had some of the well-heeled Salzburg audience audibly booing. I'm guessing this isn't a world they recognise, or are well protected from it. Get over yourselves.
(An aside. Seriously, anyone who boos during an opera performance should be ejected from the theatre for loud disruptive behaviour and spoiling the enjoyment for others more appreciative of the efforts of the creative team. There is no excuse for it in an age where you can spill out your rage on social media now anyway. You wouldn't get away with this at any other theatrical performance or artistic presentation. Would they stand in front of a painting in an art gallery and boo an artist they didn't like? Open a book and boo out loud if wasn't to their liking? It's the height of boorish behaviour and completely unproductive. What specifically did you not like? (Boo!). Did you not like the singing (Boo!). Was there something about the production you found offensive or just not to your particular taste? (Boo!). Did you feel that the orchestration or the stage directions did not confirm sufficiently to the creators' intentions and are you protesting on their behalf? (Boo!). Hmmm. Since we don't seem to be able to clarify your objections from you monosyllabic grunting perhaps we can assume that the problem here is that you feel your fragile masculinity feels threatened by the representation of a strong woman on the stage).
We don't expect it from Carmen, but even Micaëla’s message from Don José’s sweet mother appears to be a mere fantasy or dream, presaged by harsh electronic drone sounds inserted between the scenes. Extemporised scenes and electronic sounds are not the only changes or additions; there are harsh ringing alarm bell sounds, castanets but even flamenco singing interludes that don't conform to the traditional image we have of Carmen. Every effort in fact is made to move away from the idealised romanticised depiction presented in Bizet's opera and in the music. I'm not sure that it even wants to solely focus on the now commonplace reinterpretation of Carmen as a condemnation of violence against women and femicide: or at least a balance is struck between that and Don José yielding to temptation, to his own violent nature in conflict with the dangerous attraction of the wild side of Carmen where he will throw away his dwindling sense of morality and join in the bacchanal at the end of the world, a world of toxic 'anti-woke' masculinity. And custard pie throwing. A cue for more booing there surely?
Inevitably, the third and fourth acts move even further in a dark direction, as Carmen’s ultimate fate - if it wasn’t already preordained - is announced here not in the cards or the hand of fate but by far more ominous imagery and movement. And sounds, echoed voices, rumbles, drones. It's not a gypsy camp that Micaëla wanders onto, but something truly out of a nightmare; a dark, deepest dark and truly savage place. The contrast of the defenceless young woman and a naked mother just heightens the nature of the masculine world that women venture into: a place where innocence dies. This is something that if you are present in the theatre you must surely feel viscerally, as Currentzis and Kristina Mkhitaryan bring out the gentleness in her soul in contrast to the ugliness of the world around them.
There is definitely something to be said for fresh interpretations, more so here for Asmik Grigorian singing the role of Carmen as a full rich soprano. While you can argue over whether Currentzis going overboard on aggressiveness and volume is suitable or not, Carmen benefits from the intensity of the human expression in the music and the voice. There is a mighty performance here from Jonathan Tetelman as Don José, and Grigorian an outstanding Carmen, both fully invested in their characters, the depth of feeling obvious, as it should be in this most violently passionate of love affairs. Humanising it all is essential, and the production tries to support this, eliminating the glamour, seeking to create or establish an atmosphere more grounded in realism through sound, and the dislocated movements of the Peeping Tom dancers, all of which contribute to heightening this.
By the end I genuinely wondered whether I had missed some of the classic set pieces of the opera and whether new scenes and music weren't added, so radical a shift from the traditional Carmen did this new version feel, but no, I don't think so. Yes, there are some interpolations and reinterpretations, but it is wholly Carmen, re-envisioned for the regression and degeneration we see around us in some many aspects of society today. I don't think the opera was ever meant to carry this kind of extra weight, but we are in different times, the world has changed, and how we view it has changed. In that light, you have to consider that Carmen, the strong independent woman, has played some part in the journey to the small gains that have been made for women today, while this production of the opera shows us the danger of what can happen when those hard won freedoms are allowed to be gradually eroded.
External links: ARTE Concert, Salzburger Festspiele
