Felicity Buckland and Nick Morris in Carmen
(Picture: Steve Gregson)Opera has many ways of killing off its tragic heroines. The French critic Catherine Clément catalogued a few: “Nine by knife, two of them suicides; three by fire; two who jump; two consumptives; three who drown” – the list goes on. Clément continued, “The most feminist, the most stubborn of these dead women” was Bizet’s Carmen but, inevitably, “this woman who says ‘no’ will die too”, stabbed by her jealous lover Don José.
In Bizet’s 1875 original, she dies at a bullring in Seville. In Baseless Fabric’s production for Grimeborn, Dalston’s annual opera festival, things turn out differently. Gone is the opera house orchestra, replaced by a trio of bassoon, violin and accordion (“music by Leo Geyer after Georges Bizet”, the programme says). The original lasts nearly three hours; this version, directed by Joanna Turner, who also provides a new text, clocks in at just 45 minutes, and is sung in English, not French.
As for the storyline, Carmen no longer works in a cigarette factory but on a supermarket checkout, while José is a security guard. Escamillo, the bullfighter who Bizet’s Carmen falls for, is now a TikTok influencer. You get the picture: this is London 2022, not Paris 1875.
It isn’t the opera’s first makeover; most famously, in 1954, Otto Preminger turned it into Carmen Jones, a film based on a 1943 stage musical with an all-black cast. That version made a clear point; can we say the same for this new adaptation? Mostly, yes: men are still the problem.
Moments before the action begins, an announcement tells us, “Carmen is sung by Felicity Buckland. Felicity is pregnant. Please note that it’s the singer who is pregnant, not the character”. Not the kind of information you usually get over a supermarket Tannoy.
While Marina Hadjicoula’s costume designs have the ring of everyday authenticity, there are barely any sets or props: no problem, given some persuasive acting and singing.
Joanna Turner’s libretto wreaks havoc on the plot but it just about coheres, and there are some witty lines: Escamillo’s “Toréador, en garde” becomes “You follow me on Instagram”, which scans perfectly.
Carmen remains a victim of coercive control, yet fights back in a way that Bizet couldn’t allow. In Buckland’s performance, she’s a force of nature, capricious but indomitable. Claire Wild’s Micaëla is not the milk-and-water figure we’re used to but a fiery woman, determined to win back José but with an eye on the charms readily apparent in Nick Morris’s Escamillo.
By all the rules of musical logic, Geyer’s combination of violin, accordion and bassoon should be unworkable. It succeeds so completely that you barely notice the absence of an orchestra.
