Opera’s most notorious femme fatale makes a helluva entrance: the moment we meet Carmen in Georges Bizet’s 1875 opera, we know she’s a bad girl headed for a worse end. The downward chromatic slide of her opening aria tells us she’s a woman at odds with the system; the swaying habanera rhythm says she’s a seductress – a crime punishable by death in the operatic canon.
But in Opera Australia’s new production, Carmen is not the sultry vixen we know from the past 150 years: the soprano Danielle de Niese arrives dressed in a factory boiler suit, with a swagger usually reserved for opera’s men. It is present-day Seville and Carmen has finished her shift; De Niese moves through the crowd of female co-workers and male onlookers with the bravado of someone who has experienced the best and worst of being the centre of attention, and decided to square up rather than shy away. She stretches out the tension of a day on the factory line and hustles for a ciggie. The Habanera aria is usually played tits first, with swaying hips and lots of leg; De Niese’s take, both weary and wary, is a signal that things are different this time.
