Georges Bizet: Carmen

Fists clenched, manic glare, the man hurls the terrified woman to the floor and straddles her. She writhes and thrashes desperately as he throttles her to death. That will teach the rebellious bird.

The horrifying strangling of Carmen (mezzo-soprano Ruby Dibble) by jilted lover Don José (tenor Noah Stewart), in lieu of the scripted stabbing, is just one of several important breaks from convention in Northern Ireland Opera’s courageous reimagining of Georges Bizet’s Carmen.

In director Cameron Menzies' hands, Carmen is reframed, not as a tragic love story but as a provocative reflection on toxic masculinity and gender violence. It is not just in Northern Ireland where domestic violence puts too many women in their graves. The issue is global.

Perhaps because of this, NI Opera’s first staging of Carmen is of gritty contemporary design, shorn of romanticism. This is a Carmen for our times.

Niall McKeever’s set, on first impression, is disarmingly stripped back. A bunch of guys hang out in a battered urban playground, lifting dumbbells, doing bench presses and popping cans of beer. Amid beer kegs and crates, car tires and pallets, macho poses abound. One wears a Ramones T-shirt. Another sports Adidas.

The symbolism in the details of this unusual set design gradually dawns.

A tall wire fence looms cage-like. This is a man’s world, where male tribal conventions nurture a dangerous mentality and make prisoners of all. The only thing missing are the tattoos.

There is another stark break from tradition in Act One when the cigarette factory girls come outside for a smoke break. The “factory” takes the form of a shipping container. The girls emerge weary, their grimy clothes nicotine-stained. In a heartbeat, the scourges of sweatshop exploitation and trafficking raise their spectre.

Ogled by the soldiers from the guardhouse opposite (our weight-lifting beer-guzzlers), the disinterested girls roll their fags in time to Bizet’s wonderfully rhythmic score. It is a scene devoid of flirtatious frivolity, and an early indicator that this is no run-of-the-mill production of Carmen. When the folksy, butter-wouldn’t-melt Micaëla (soprano Mary McCabe) arrives looking for Don José, the soldiers swarm around her in predatory, intimidating fashion.

Whilst bold creative license places the action in contemporary spaces, subtly dark and urgent shading colors Bizet’s score, which works its perennial magic. Conductor Greg Arrowsmith drives the thirty-three-piece orchestra with an energy that highlights the music’s syncopated rhythms, and leads with acute finesse where this unsettling tale tugs at the heartstrings.

Few operas boast as many famous melodies and arias. Dibble seduces on “Habanera,” which Bizet borrowed from Basque composer Sebastián Iradier’s popular Spanish song “El Arreglito.” The Kansas City mezzo-soprano’s Carmen bosses the stage as a bohemian free spirit—confident, sensual and untamable.

Stewart, who impressed in NI Opera’s 2019 production of La Traviata, gives another finely judged performance as her spurned lover, twisted with jealousy and rage. His closing duet with Dibble in Act 4 bristles with emotional intensity.

Baritone Thomas Chenhall incarnates the swaggering toreador Escamillo. His rendition in Act 2 of “Toreador Song,” arguably the opera’s musical signature, delivers as expected, but all told his is not an especially memorable Escamillo.

For sheer lyricism and technical virtuosity, however, there is nothing to match McCabe’s “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante” in Act 3—a hypnotic performance, effectively spotlighted, and warmly appreciated by the Belfast audience.

Superb throughout is the twenty-five-piece Northern Ireland Opera Chorus. Under the guidance of Chorus Master Frasier Hickland, they embrace Bizet’s wickedly intricate polyphonic lines quite brilliantly. A key part of NI Opera’s development programme, the investment in developing local talent is clearly paying rich dividends.

There is much more to admire in this vibrant spectacle. The Children’s Chorus, directed by India Chapman-Webb, delights in its cameos. Dancers Adam Ashford, Maeve McGreevy, Mira Rendilheiro and Augusto Ezequiel Castaño Cevilian import sensuality and panache—the most obvious link to the opera’s Sevillian inspiration.

Notable too, the performances of the versatile mezzo-soprano Jenny Bourke as Mercédès and soprano Petra Wells as Frasquita. They entwine with Dibble to musically uplifting effect.

In one of the production’s boldest gambits, the first actors to appear are not the soldiers of the original libretto, but five female musicians. Cheylene Murphy (fiddle), Jackie Rainey (guitar), Cecily Smith Nesbitt (cello), Kristin Wei Wong (clarinet) and Elaine O’Sullivan (accordion) feature throughout. Their folk-tinged rendering of the opera’s iconic themes is a canny musical-theatrical device that adds a dynamic and original thread.

In the end, however, it is the brutal final scene–played out behind closed doors–that casts its shadow over all that has gone before. One man’s jealousy-driven murder of a woman who only wanted her freedom is an all-too-common headline in our times, as it doubtless was in Bizet’s too. Who in attendance will ever hear Bizet’s Carmen in quite the same way again? Opera at its most relevant and affecting.