Carmen is a heroine who embodies the mid-nineteenth century bourgeois male idea that, left to their primitive, natural state, untouched by either Church or society’s civilising conventions, women are sexually irrepressible, promiscuous, fickle and dishonourable.
The only profession they’d be qualified for, her creator (the French novelist Prosper Mérimée) reckons, is rolling cigars in a factory. And yes, the double entendre would not have been lost on male readers of the 1845 novella. Notably, to remove such female type as far as possible from his contemporary, well-mannered lady readers, Mérimée plonked Carmen among tarot card fortune-telling gypsies, bandits and smugglers in that cradle of uncivilised, raw emotions that is neighbouring Spain, where the greatest respect is afforded to the one who kills bulls for fun.
Mérimée’s novella inspired the composer Bizet, whose opera Carmen premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1875, with some added characters and new twists of plot. It was reviled by Parisians and it broke Bizet, who died three months after its theatrical failure. It was also mauled by critics when produced in Vienna later that year and was not staged in Italy until 1879. But it triumphed in London.
The tale of the gipsy cigar-maker seductress, who drives army sergeant Don José insane with desire and jealousy, lures him into betraying his own military honour to become a bandit, then drops him for bullfighter Escamillo, went on to be performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Italian in 1878, there again in English in 1879 and, finally, in 1886, in the original French. So there you have it: this French reverie of Spanish lust that is Carmen, is a very British, very Victorian operatic creature.
To contemporary artistic taste the story of Carmen is a huge elephant trap of stereotypes, prejudices and tropes. Yet Bizet’s opera Carmen is much loved. Its sex politics are shrugged off, like that of most operas, because of its stonking great arias: the rambunctious Toreador song, the tender Flower song and the beguiling Habanera song are not just instantly recognisable and hummable, but are the battle cry, audition pieces and key repertoire of baritones, tenors and mezzo-sopranos who all adore singing them. These are the arias that keep ticket money flowing in and opera houses from going to the wall.
Once you wrench the story of Carmen from its operatic arias, however, what are you left with? What will you make of her cigars and lust for bullfighters? Several contemporary productions and dance transpositions have tried to emancipate Carmen from the Carmen archetype: some even making her into an early feminist. But that cigar rolling nails her to her destiny.
Carlos Acosta, a 1990s ballet idol, youngest principal dancer of The English National Ballet at 18, now working exclusively as choreographer and director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, has walked unapologetically into the elephant trap with his full-length ballet adaptation of Carmen for Sadler’s Wells. He even adds one more archetype of his own: he treads the boards as an allegorical Bull, slowly pacing the stage, bending the cast’s limbs into position, master of everyone’s fate, projecting his fantastically oversized horns above all other dancers.
Designed to showcase the dual skill of Cuban dance and classical ballet of Acosta Danza, the company Carlos founded in 2015 upon retiring from professional ballet, this production sees his dancers tune up the typecasting and play to the gallery. Laura Rodriguez’ Carmen stuns as much for her elevations as for the black lace underwear she is stripped to throughout when seducing Don José.
It’s all very steamy. Yet Carlos Acosta may well be Carmen’s latest victim: hoping to use her story to project his choreographic prowess, it feels as though Carmen fought back and successfully humiliated him.
Acosta’s choreography is actually very good and his company’s dancers make him proud, but his own Bull-shaped appearance in slightly wobbly styrofoam horns pained those who were hoping to see a new language for ballet. Juxtaposing Cuban and classical dance proves his bilingual credentials but not his originality. Bringing Black dancers to the world stage, as his company is doing, is vital but amounts to hitting the mere baseline.
Carlos Acosta needs to decide what he wants his legacy to be. It’s time to cast his boy-wonder past aside, leave Carmen to her own destiny and come back to us with a choreography and style that is genuinely new: he has got it in him.
• For the Sadler’s Wells programme visit the website here