As a punishment a bare-chested soldier is shown circling the stage until he collapses through exhaustion and is carried away. We are at an outpost on the Spain/Morocco border where we find macho, tattooed, sex-starved squaddies, along with gypsies who are not only smugglers but sell sex. The fatal denouement happens in a large white circle drawn by Lillas Pastia (a non-singing Yta Moreno) who Bieito shows as both white fedoraed pimp, as well as the ringmaster overseeing proceedings and who begins the opera with a cackling ‘Love is like death!’. This Carmen – designed by Bieito’s regular collaborators Alfons Flores and Mercè Paloma – is visually striking although everything is rather dark and hazy with only a few elements on stage to distinguish the four acts: in Act I there is a flagpole and a telephone box to one side one car, a folding chair, some cool boxes and – for some reason – a fake Christmas tree in Act II five Mercedes-Benz saloon cars are hauntingly overshadowed by the iconic Osborne sherry black bull silhouette for Act III with this bull being ‘deconstructed’ at the start of the final act. Again, it now benefitted from close-up camerawork which makes the viewer concentrate on the almost constant threat of brutality and sexual violence that dominates Bieito’s Konzept. On screen in 20 (in an empty opera house because of Covid-19) I have found it immensely powerful. Now regarded as a modern classic, it was first staged at the 1999 Peralada Festival in northern Catalonia, has travelled to America and elsewhere in Europe, and indeed will be next seen in Paris in coming months.īieito’s Carmen premiered last year in Vienna and strips – literally at one point! – the familiar story down to its bare essentials and notably there is very little dialogue. I first saw this Carmen in the cinema in 2015 when it was revived by English National Opera. Meanwhile – perhaps his best production so far – Carmen has returned and gained an extra performance for a sell-out run because of the cancellation of a previously advertised La Juive revival. Spanish theatre director Calixto Bieito is regarded as an enfant terrible of opera and his recent Vienna Tristan und Isolde lingers in the memory (review click here) and he will soon be staging two of Mahler’s song cycles in the opera house where the composer was in charge for ten years. Staging rehearsed by Calixto Bieito and Joan Anton Rechi (JPr) Elīna Garanča (centre, Carmen) and Piotr Beczała (right, Don José) © Wiener Staatsoper Performed at the Vienna State Opera and livestreamed (directed by Jasmina Eleta) on. Austria Bizet, Carmen: Soloists, Children of the Opera School, Chorus and Orchestra of Vienna State Opera / Yves Abel (conductor).