“Carmen” by Damiano Michieletto at the Royal Opera House

We will see this staging of “Carmen” at La Scala next season, which debuted at the Royal Opera House directed by Damiano Michieletto. First meeting of the director – and his consolidated collaborators Paolo Fantin (scenes), Carla Teti (costumes) – with a work that has almost taken on a totemic dimension. A work that is the fruit of what in 1875 was the theatrical and musical capital of Europe (that is, at the time, of the world); where every single note makes perfect sense (do we remember Nietzsche’s “conversion”, from Wagner to Bizet, like Paul on the Road to Damascus?); and where the tension between archetypes and taboos explodes.

70s setting

Subsequently, Carmen’s story attracted a lot of entertainment, from Rita Hayworth to Beyoncé; she has been told in various versions, from flamenco to hip-hop; set from the Netherlands to South Africa; in the Tom and Jerry cartoons; and in more than seventy films, from Charlie Chaplin to Jean-Luc Godard. Michieletto and his team – joined by the lighting designer Alessandro Carletti – successfully passed the formidable test. This is demonstrated by the credibility and modernity of the protagonist’s acting in topical (and worn) scenes such as the Habanera, the proxemics between her and Don José in the police office or, once more between them, in the final scene of the killing; the 1970s setting in a parched, modest Spanish province, with costumes that immediately transport us to that precise period; having freshly resolved overused scenes such as those in the tavern in Act II. And once more, the dramaturgical propulsion achieved through the lighting design, where there are two protagonists: a grid with one hundred white or yellow light fixtures, visible, which tilts, raises and lowers; and four cinema spotlights (from “five thousand”), two on each side at the corners of the footlight. The repeated presence of the woman in the black mantilla (the Mother, Death…) is an unnecessary didactic excess. In her title role, twenty-seven-year-old Aigul Akhmetshina, born in a village in the Urals, shines in her rich vocality in all registers and in her physique du rôle; she has already made herself known in Italy, at the Verona Arena and at the S. Carlo. Conductor Antonello Manacorda draws a convincing interpretation, although we would have liked more attention to the splendid designs of Bizet’s orchestral writing.

Carmen, Royal Opera House, London, until 31 May