Georges Bizet’s Carmen, first performed at the Opéra Comique in Paris on March 3, 1875, a mere three months before the composer’s death, is both his final work and the most famous and beloved of his operas. It returns to the stage of Teatro La Fenice as part of the 2025–26 Opera Season. The drama centres on Carmen, a beautiful and fiercely independent gypsy woman who works in a cigarette factory. For sheer pleasure, she begins to seduce Don José, a young and honest brigadier. After a fight, Carmen is arrested, but José, now completely under her spell and tasked with guarding her, lets her escape. He is imprisoned for neglecting his duty, marking the beginning of his moral and social downfall. Upon his release, José abandons his former life entirely, persuaded by Carmen to desert the army and join her world of smugglers. Their passionate relationship, however, is short lived. Carmen’s desire for freedom and her refusal to belong to anyone lead her to a new lover, Escamillo, a charismatic bullfighter. Consumed by jealousy and despair, José vows revenge. The tragedy culminates outside the bullring in Seville, where Carmen rejects José one final time and is stabbed to death by him, at the very moment when Escamillo triumphs inside the arena amid the cheers of the crowd.
The Fenice Theatre presents the now classic production by Catalan director Calixto Bieito, previously staged there three times between 2012 and 2017. Created as an international co production with major Italian and Spanish theatres, the production premiered at the Peralada Festival and has since entered the repertory of numerous opera houses, winning the Abbiati Prize for Best Direction in 2011, while also provoking significant controversy. Bizet’s Carmen was itself revolutionary at the time, introducing dark naturalistic themes into French opéra comique and shocking contemporary critics. Avoiding overtly political or moralizing readings, Bieito instead emphasizes the opera’s raw, Dionysian energy, setting the action in a harsh, surreal version of 1970s Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Morocco. This brutal, hyper sexualized environment amplifies the violence and despair inherent in the story, stripping away romantic idealization and plunging all characters into a landscape of corruption and emptiness. Conducted by Francesco Ivan Ciampa, the production will be presented in eight performances in May, with two alternating international casts.
Featured image: © Michele Crosera
