Carmen

Three months in 1875

Prosper Mérimée published the novella Carmen in the journal Revue des deux Mondes in 1845. Thirty years later Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy cut it into a four-act libretto for Georges Bizet and the Opéra-Comique, a Paris theatre whose subscribers expected domestic comedy and a reassuring ending. The premiere fell on 3 March 1875, with Adolphe Deloffre conducting and Célestine Galli-Marié in the title role. Halévy's own account has the first act going down well and acts three and four turning glacial from first to last. Press reaction ran from disappointment to outrage, the complaints splitting between the amorality of the heroine and a charge of Wagnerism aimed at the score.

Bizet died in June 1875, three months after the opening, with the piece still counted a failure in the city that commissioned it. Paris did not stage it again until 1883. After that revival it moved fast, at home and abroad, and the tallies are the clearest measure of what happened next: the Opéra-Comique alone had given Carmen 2,271 times by 1938, and the Metropolitan Opera had reached close to a thousand performances by 2011.

Two texts, four acts, and the numbers everyone recognises

Carmen was written as an opéra comique in the technical sense, with spoken dialogue between the musical numbers rather than continuous sung recitative. For the Vienna production later in 1875, Ernest Guiraud replaced that dialogue with recitatives of his own, producing a grand-opera edition that became the standard text outside France for more than a century. Which version a house chooses still shapes the pace of an evening, and both remain in circulation.

What survived either way are the set pieces: Carmen's habanera, L'amour est un oiseau rebelle; the seguidilla, Près des remparts de Séville; Escamillo's Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre; and Don José's flower song. They are among the handful of operatic numbers an audience is likely to know before the house lights go down, which is both the work's commercial foundation and the problem every director now sets out to solve.

What directors are arguing about

The Metropolitan Opera's current staging, by the English director Carrie Cracknell in her Met debut, opened on 31 December 2023 at 6.30pm. It moved the action to the present day and built the evening around gendered violence, abusive labour structures and the pressure of social boundaries, with sets by Michael Levine, costumes by Tom Scutt, lighting by Guy Hoare, choreography by Ann Yee and projections by rocafilm/Roland Horvath. Aigul Akhmetshina sang the title role in the winter run to 27 January 2024, opposite Piotr Beczała, Angel Blue and Kyle Ketelsen under Daniele Rustioni, with a Live in HD transmission on 27 January 2024; Clémentine Margaine, Michael Fabiano, Ailyn Pérez and Ryan Speedo Green took the spring run from 25 April to 25 May 2024 under Diego Matheuz.

London's version came the same season. Damiano Michieletto's production for the Royal Opera arrived in 2024, designed by Paolo Fantin with costumes by Carla Teti and lighting by Alessandro Carletti, pulling Seville into the police stations, nightclubs and barns of contemporary Spain rather than the streets of the 1780s. Its first revival, in April 2025, was widely judged tighter and more pointed than the premiere.

Smaller companies have pushed the same reading further. Northern Ireland Opera played Carmen at the Grand Opera House in Belfast from 12 to 19 September 2026, directed and costumed by Cameron Menzies with Greg Arrowsmith as music director. The staging set the action in a post-conflict backlot framed by chain-link fencing, presented the cigarette girls as trafficking victims and staged the final scene as domestic violence rather than a crime of passion. Ruby Dibble sang Carmen, with Noah Stewart as Don José, Mary McCabe as Micaëla and Thomas Chenhall as Escamillo.

Autumn 2026: Los Angeles and Covent Garden

LA Opera opens its 2026/27 season with a new Carmen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, running from 17 October to 7 November 2026. Thaddeus Strassberger directs and designs the sets, Antonio Najarro choreographs, and Domingo Hindoyan conducts in his first appearance as the company's music director. Rihab Chaieb sings the title role opposite Joshua Guerrero as Don José, with Kathleen O'Mara as Micaëla and Liam James Karai as Escamillo. The staging places Seville between centuries and drives the contrast between sacred and profane to a finish on the threshold between a bullring and a religious procession. It is a co-production with Houston Grand Opera and Detroit Opera, which means two further cities will inherit it.

At Covent Garden, Michieletto's production returns from 29 October to 21 November 2026, conducted by Sesto Quatrini. Ginger Costa-Jackson and Ramona Zaharia divide the title role, Russell Thomas and Valentyn Dytiuk share Don José, Adriana González and Simona Mihai alternate as Micaëla, and Alexander Vinogradov sings Escamillo. The run includes a live cinema relay on Tuesday 10 November 2026 at 7pm GMT, part of the Royal Ballet and Opera's 2026/27 cinema season.

Who carries it, and what the reviews actually say

Akhmetshina has the strongest recent claim on the part, having led the Met's new production from New Year's Eve 2023 and returned to it at Covent Garden in April 2025 opposite Freddie De Tommaso, with Łukasz Goliński as Escamillo and Yaritza Véliz as Micaëla. Bachtrack's reviewer of the 9 April 2025 performance wrote that she dominated the stage, drawing all eyes and ears. The criticism that night went to the pit: Sir Mark Elder, conducting the opera for the first time at the Royal Opera, was faulted for slow tempi and heavy accents that flattened the opéra-comique finesse out of the score.

The pattern held in New York a season later. At the Met revival on 28 October 2025, Isabel Leonard sang Carmen with Michael Fabiano as Don José, Kristina Mkhitaryan as Micaëla and Adam Plachetka as Escamillo, with Fabien Gabel making his Met debut in the pit. OperaWire's Jennifer E. Pyron called Mkhitaryan the highlight of the night and said the orchestra sounded excellent, while objecting to the production's ambiguous politics and to high-power LEDs projected out at the audience. Across both houses the singing and the playing are what reviewers reliably endorse; the directorial argument is what divides the room.