Staging Carmen On some fertile infidelities

Since the aftermath of the Second World War, productions of Carmen have shed new light on Bizet’s work, albeit at the expense of distorting his opéra comique aesthetic. Three productions, by Calixto Bieito, Robert Carsen, and Dmitri Tcherniakov, respectively, allow us to appreciate the main orientations of current readings, where the character and the Hispanic setting are frequently considered according to contemporary ideology.