Nicola Lisle meets Opera Up Close artistic director Robin Norton-Hale

When Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875, it shocked the audiences at the Opéra Comique with its graphic depiction of aggression and depravity in the shimmering heat of Seville.

Since then, Bizet’s glorious score – which includes the famous Habanera and Toreador’s Song – has perhaps softened the effects a little.

Opera Up Close’s innovative production, in a new English translation by company co-founder Robin Norton-Hale, re-examines the violence at the heart of the piece and encourages audiences to rethink their own responses to it.

“I’ve always had a problem with the fact that the opera seems to say – or certainly the productions I’ve seen seem to say – that Carmen causes her own death because she has relationships with men, and because she ends this relationship with José he kills her and that’s her fault and it’s okay,” Robin explains.

“I think that’s something we need to look at, because that’s really not okay!

“I’m not saying we need to make the whole thing really grim. She’s an amazing, sexy, magnetic character, and that is a crucial element of it.

“But the the more I worked on it with the cast, the more I thought essentially she’s a victim of domestic violence because she’s killed by her ex-partner.”

Robin has re-set the opera in a stifling, dry, dusty town in South America, where simmering tensions between men and the women can be keenly felt.

“I didn’t want it to be set when it was written, because this is something that could happen to anyone.

“I think sometimes when you take an opera, particularly a famous story, and put it in a very specific new time and place, that can be very revealing, but equally as an audience member you can get very caught up in how clever the update is, and I wanted to do something a bit more universal.”

For Robin, boredom is a key factor in the story. “I think one of the reasons this whole story happens is that everyone’s really bored,” she says.

“There’s loads of waiting around, and that’s very much in the original, in the music.

“You’ve got these soldiers who are really bored because nothing happens, and these girls working at the factory doing the same thing day after day, and they’re really bored.

“That’s why Carmen picks out José, because she’s just bored. It’s her bad luck that she picks out the wrong person.”

Robin has eschewed the traditional gypsy costumes – which she regards as a bit clichéd for modern audiences – so all the factory girls are in jumpsuits.

“We’ve not made Carmen a gypsy. I think the function of that originally was to make her different and dangerous, and I think she can be different and dangerous without that.”

The production has a cast of just nine, with an onstage “orchestra” consisting of a piano, cello, violin and flute.

“We don’t have any chorus, so everyone works really hard,” Robin says. “Carmen and José don’t really get a break.

“The show runs for 2 hours 15 minutes, plus interval, and Carmen is pretty much onstage the whole time. It’s a tour de force!”

Where and when
Opera Up Close: Carmen
Oxford Playhouse
Wednesday January 20, 7.30pm
Tickets: 01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com