Our Carmen sets out to chronicle a homicide: the violent murder of a woman.
The production moves away from a picturesque reading of Bizet’s opera. Carmen’s freedom is not a romantic anecdote: it is what her world cannot accept, and the reason Don José turns desire into possession.
“I killed her because she was mine.”
The Barcelona of the 1960s becomes the labyrinth of this tragedy. La Rambla’s tablaos, the scent of oranges and sea, smuggling and the harshness of dictatorship are not decoration: they build the world that watches, judges and finally abandons Carmen.
Putting the woman at the centre changes the perspective of the entire opera. Don José and Escamillo no longer occupy the heroic space often granted to them; they become part of the mechanism that reduces Carmen to a trophy, possession or myth.