John Fulljames’s new production for Scottish Opera sets Bizet’s 1875 work as a true-crime thriller in 1970s Spain – the twilight years of Franco’s regime, when Spain found itself at the threshold of transformative political and social change.
Working with Christopher Cowell’s translation, Fulljames returns to Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 source novella. Mérimée’s text begins with the narrator’s meeting with Don José, who recounts the story of his relationship with Carmen; Fulljames’s production opens in a similar vein, with Don José being interviewed about the murder by a female police inspector (actor Carmen Pieraccini in a non-speaking role). The events of the opera play out in flashback as José delivers his confession. Pieraccini’s inspector is an engaging counterpoint to Carmen, a device that also allows Fulljames to make use of the work’s often-awkward sections of spoken dialogue, cut in most stagings.
