Founded in 1990 by director Dmitri Bertman, Moscow's Helikon Opera is regarded as the company that redefined opera as radical, cutting-edge musical theatre for today's Russian audiences. Compared with the traditional stagings of the core repertoires of the Kirov and the Bolshoi, Helikon's approach is innovative, though this production begs questions about Bertman's attitudes and methodology.

Carmen opened in Moscow in 1998 to controversy, partly because it was considered sexually explicit and partly because it had been updated. Bertman relocates the piece to a punkish urban present, where the soldiers have mutated into an NYPD Blue-type police force and the smugglers have become drug dealers, who employ Carmen to sleep with cops to get them to turn a blind eye. José, whose unseen mother sends Micaela with sandwiches for his beat - is simply another officer Carmen has to ensnare. It's only when she encounters Escamillo and falls in love that emotional and moral awareness dawns and catastrophe ensues.

Unfortunately, Bertman equates redefining an opera with rewriting it. There are massive cuts - all the dialogue and recitative, plus many of the main choruses - that wreck the structure. Escamillo is killed off stage - by whom is unclear - while Carmen, who has gone to pieces after being presented with his clothes, is murdered not by José, but by Micaela, implausibly, given that there has been no hint of her potential for violence.

All this sits uneasily with what remains of the music, which is decently performed though not greatly so. The best singing comes from Elena Semenova as Micaela, the worst from Igor Tarasov's dull Escamillo. Nikolai Doroshkin is the agonised, unsteady José, and Larissa Kostyuk sounds good as Carmen - though her extravagant costumes and hair make her look like a drag queen. Some of it is entertaining, but it is not Carmen, by any stretch of the imagination.

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