Damiano Michieletto’s Carmen has plenty going for it. The Italian director’s colourful 2024 staging, revived here for the second time already, is an effective update of a work where sexual violence can feel normalised if not handled with care. Here, it’s a subtle combination of emotional immaturity, relentless heat and habitual boredom that eventually blows the lid off the pressure cooker.
With the action relocated to Franco’s Spain, the oppressive police presence and reactive societal lawlessness ring true, even if Michieletto glosses over the era’s darker elements. In a remote rural community, Carmen and her smuggler associates may be merely kicking against the pricks, but their antiestablishment chutzpah wins hearts and minds from the get-go. None of them are actually freedom fighters, but we root for them as if they were.
Isolated within a barren Mediterranean landscape, Paolo Fantin’s confining, Hopper-esque buildings heighten the claustrophobic mood. Alessandro Carletti’s torrid lighting does the rest. Carla Teti’s gaudy 70s costumes seem a little stagy – such brightly clad smugglers would be shot on sight – but the vibe is, on the whole, authentic. Within this Latin nowheresville, Carmen, the only local with a bit of get-up-and-go, almost wills the unfolding tragedy – a change, after all, is as good as a rest.
The production has its faults. Don José’s mother popping up as a symbol of fate is overused and over literal (and why can only Carmen see her?). Worse, though, is the cutesy parade of children during the entr’actes, which ruins some of Bizet’s most charming music, while their comedic presence is increasingly at odds with the onstage brutality. But then Michieletto seems keener on pointing to a certain picaresque quality to be found in Prosper Mérimée’s original novella.
It’s a complex staging and Dan Dooner’s revival is a bit rough around the edges. The blocking occasionally feels purposeless, but the chorus, and especially the children, sing well, and Sesto Quatrini’s lively conducting grows bolder as the evening progresses.
At the heart of this production is Ginger Costa-Jackson’s elemental Carmen, an emotional powder keg, smouldering, smoking and frequently raging against her destiny. Her mounting frustration rarely disturbs the voice, however, which is dark and velvety with a battering ram lower register. Russell Thomas produces a thrilling stream of sound as Don José, rising to an electrifying final scene. Earlier, though, the spark between them sputters, not helped by his having to sing The Flower Song to a brick wall.
Adriana González’s phrasing and dynamics lend vocal appeal to Michieletto’s mousey, myopic Micaëla, and Alexander Vinogradov brings swagger and style to the neon-suited toreador. The night, though, belongs to Costa-Jackson, a Carmen who blazes as brightly as any, before inevitably going down in flames.
• Carmen is at the Royal Opera House, London until 21 November
