Wexford Festival: La Tragédie de Carmen

National Opera House (Jerome Hynes Theatre), Wexford; 24/10/2025

Rebecca Warren (music director, piano); Sarah Richmond (mezzo-soprano); Dafydd Allen (tenor); Philip Kalmanovitch (baritone); Roisín Walsh (soprano); Conor Cooper (bass-baritone); Vladimir Sima (tenor); Jonah Halton (tenor)..

In this fourth of ten reports from this year’s Wexford Festival Opera we look at the first of two ‘Pocket Operas’, shorter and with smaller forces in the smaller Jerome Hynes Theatre of the National Opera House.  ‘La Tragédie de Carmen’ draws its musical material entirely from Bizet’s original, but it is no mere ‘highlights’ compilation, but rather a 1981 one-act adaptation by director Peter Brook, with a tauter, grittier, pacier script by academy award-winning screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, and Bizet’s music arranged by Romanian-born French composer Marius Constant.  I caught the performance of 24th October.  Much is stripped away.  There is no chorus, no preamble or mood-setting scenes, no cigarette factory girls, no other gypsies and no smugglers.  Five main characters are retained: Don José (still quite naïve, but not at all innocent and prone to violence), Carmen (street fortune teller as a front for pickpocketing, still a seductress), Escamillo (bullfighter as before), Micaela (no shrinking violet and certainly not the meek angelic creature of the original) and Zuniga (Don José’s superior officer in the quasi-military law-enforcement unit, maybe police).  Lillas Pastia is the landlord of a dodgy hostelry (as in the original), but also a receiver of stolen goods, in a non-singing role important in the dialogue and the action.  A new character, Garcia, is Carmen’s estranged husband who shows up and puts the cat among the pigeons. The narrative takes turns not found in the original; the ‘tragedy’ is quite different, though still undeniably tragic.  There are moments of  humour too.  The one-acter is sung in French with English dialogues.  In this production, a rich piano reduction of Constant’s 15-piece chamber ensemble score delivers the instrumental part.

Music direction is jointly by Irish répétiteur and collaborative pianist Rebecca Warren (who plays the piano in the production) and American répétiteur and collaborative pianist Nate Ben-Horin,  Stage direction is by Northern Irish director (and RCS graduate) Tom Deazley,  The show was designed by Lisa Krügel and lit by Maksym Diedov.

So what’s left when the scissors and the Sharpies are put away?  A desolate unharmonised line, adapted from Carmen’s declaration of her own indomitable independence later in the original opera, opens as a solitary figure in a red dress, with her face concealed by the hood of an anorak, is hunkered down in the square. She is dealing and examining hands of cards.  Micaela (Irish soprano Roisín Walsh) arrives.  We get her ‘Je cherche un brigadier’ but she gets no change out of the solitary figure and sits on a bench to wait.  Don José (Welsh tenor Dafydd Allen) arrives and they embrace.  We get all of their extended duet (‘Parle-moi de ma mère’, the letter and the whole “mammy’s boy” routine).  Unlike the original, he and Micaela are already an item.  All the while, Carmen (for the solitary figure is she; Northern Irish mezzo Sarah Richmond) is eyeing up Don José and she likes.  She launches her ‘Habanera’ (excellent), the first verse to reel Don José in, placing a flower into his buttonhole, the second right in Micaela’s face.  Micaela storms off, pursued by José and, when they return, an almighty catfight erupts between the two women, in which Micaela gives almost as much as she gets (see what I mean by a very different Micaela?), but is lying battered on the ground when Zuniga (Irish bass-baritone Conor Cooper) arrives,  He arrests Carmen and orders José to fetch a rope to restrain her. Even tethered, she runs rings around them, teasing José and taunting Zuniga (“I wasn’t talking to you; I was singing to myself” is so much smarter than “no comment”, isn’t it?).  The rest of the operatic Act I plays out as normal. She sings the ‘Sequidilla’ arranging a tryst with José when he gets out, she gives him the slip and he is arrested. 

‘Les dragons d’Alcala’ is played on the piano. José gets out on early release but is dismissed by Zuniga, Lillas Pastia (RCS graduate, Romanian tenor Vladimir Sima) arrives to open up the bar, grumbling whimsically at his hard life, having to do all the drudgery himself, as the dance from Act II plays,  Carmen, singing the “tra-la-la” part, shows up with a haul of pickpocketing swag, which he examines with a loupe.  Zuniga arrives as a customer and Carmen entertains him with drink and song, then more ‘hands-on’, as she picks his pockets, passing the items to Lillas Pastia (quite humorous to watch).  Considerably more ‘genuine’ Act II material is when Don José shows up after his release and she dances seductively for him, the trumpet call from the barracks woven into the texture of the music.  When he heeds the roll call and makes to go instead of responding to her sexy moves, she loses it, mocking his captive servility,  He declares his devotion (pretty much the same as the original). The next bit is not.  Zuniga chooses the wrong moment to weigh in with his tuppenceworth. José turns on him and in the ensuing scuffle actually kills him. Rather comically, Lillas Pastia helps José to move the corpse to a bench where it is propped up against a seated José, as if the worse for wear rather than dead.  Back to the old script for the arrival of Escamillo (Canadian/American/British baritone Philip Kalmanovitch), complete with suavity (more than swagger), sexiness and a Stetson. He sings the Toréador’s Song, much to Carmen’s delight, inflaming José’s jealousy.  He is about to intervene when Zuniga’s corpse slides to the floor and Lillas Pastia comically helps him to prop it up again before anyone notices, then holds him back from tackling Escamillo. José pulls out a knife, as does Escamillo, and there is a spectacular knife fight. José is the victor, but he is pulled away by Carmen and Lillas Pastia before he adds to the body count (see what I mean by a more violent José?).  Escamillo, unharmed, bids “au revoir” to the other two but makes it clear that if he ever sees José again, it will be too soon. José sings ‘La fleur que tu m'avais jetée’ (superbly, melting Carmen and the audience alike).  As the Prelude to Act III from the original (a beautiful serenade-like idyll) plays on the piano, they leave together and Lillas Pastia tidies up, assisted by a stagehand after comically shouting “Am I the only one who does any work around here?”

As Carmen and José share an intimate moment, her husband Garcia (English tenor Jonah Halton) arrives: “Who are you?  She hasn’t told you about me?  She is mine”.  There is yet another knife fight, with José again the victor, but he pauses before delivering the coup de grâce, which permits Garcia to escape.  José pursues him. Carmen sees death in the tarot cards. When José returns, Carmen, in tears, dismisses him.  Micaela arrives and sings ‘Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante’ (absolutely stunningly).  Towards the end (and of course unusually), Carmen sings phrases in harmony with Micaela.  Perhaps both realise now that José is bad news (the biggest shift in perspective of this adaptation).

A recording of orchestral music, that could be the start of either Act IV or the Overture, plays and  turns out to be the latter, with the piano joining in for the last few suspenseful, doom-laden bars.  Lillas Pastia arrives for the morning routine of opening up the premises and sets out bunting for the day of the bullfight.  Escamillo arrives with his kit and takes out 2 sharp knives (to be bull’s horns) and a red silken cloth and the friends comically enact a simulated bullfight.  More seriously, Escamillo attends to his prayerful toréador’s pre-fight ritual.  Carmen arrives and they sing the duet of devotion ‘Si tu m'aimes, Carmen’ (which was absolutely gorgeous).  Escamillo packs up his stuff and heads off to the bullfight.  José shows up and we get all of the scene where he pleads with her but she is adamant they are finished, emotionally supercharged.  She pushes him over and heads off to the bullfight. We see his anguish. There are screams offstage.  Carmen appears, holding Escamillo’s red silk cloth. He has been gored to death in the bullring.  Micaela has left for good.  She walks off, he follows, both dejected.  Both have lost everything. The accompanying figure from the Habanera plays diminuendo on the piano.

“It’s Carmen, Jim, but not as we know it”.  Perhaps.  But it is thoroughly marvellous, nonetheless. The piano playing and singing were excellent. The characterisation was compelling and convincing. The dramatic tension was sustained and thrilling.  ‘Carmen’ was the first opera I got to know from start to finish, from the 1964 Callas/Gedda recording.  In 2023, a musically excellent Scottish Opera production in English with no dialogue was compromised by a bizarre mise-en-scène that has earned it the sobriquet “The Taggart Carmen” from some.  I harbour no purist pretensions.  But, even if I did, this production of a fascinating adaptation counts as a winner.

Photo credit: Padraig Grant