New: A Controversial CARMEN at SF Opera
On Friday evening, May 27, SF Opera opened its summer season with a new production of Bizet’s immensely popular opera Carmen. This Carmen was directed by the daring and controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito, dubbed “the bad-boy of opera,” in his U.S. opera debut. This production, which premiered in Catalonia back in 1999 and has been performed on several continents since, is here staged by Bieito’s longtime collaborator, Joan Anton Rechi. A San Francisco Opera press release noted that “this production contains violence, nudity and suggestive behavior. Parent discretion advised.”
Well, let’s see about that. There was no nudity I detected on opening night, although Carmen, played in exquisitely sultry fashion by mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts, at one point hiked up her skirt and removed her panties before mounting a supine but fully clothed Don José. On the other hand, there was considerable violence, usually inflicted by men, (especially the Spanish soldiers of the Gaurdia Civil), against women, although some violence was directed against men, as in the savage beating of Lieutenant Zuniga, Don José’s superior officer, by Carmen’s gypsy men in Act II. Ultimately, what struck me as most controversial about this pro-vocative production was its initial premise, which situates the drama, at least in the opening two acts, in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco.
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