Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Carmen

Interesting ideas and a brilliant orchestral performance aren't enough to overcome a visually dull staging, predictable choreography and a lack of chemistry between the protagonists.

Stage director Ole Anders Tandberg casts Carmen as the leader of a gang of human organ dealers.

This summer’s production of Bizet’s Carmen on the Seebühne stage in Bregenz offers a great spectacle. 

The staging highlighted Carmen’s rebellious traits more than her sensual exoticism.

Love may well be a rebellious bird, but that's as nothing to maverick director Dmitri Tcherniakov, whose twisted staging for Festival d'Aix reimagines Bizet's opera as a radical therapy session.

A superlative performance of Carmen that was certainly among the most thrilling performances New Zealand Opera has put on in recent memory.

Sex and violence bubbles beneath the surface in this near-faultless staging of Carmen. 

One of the world’s great Carmens and John Bell’s smart direction is a winning combination for this Opera Australia production.

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Carmen is lusciously embodied, with expressionistic splashes of colour against a quasi-modern backdrop. 

The revival of Calixto Bieito's Carmen in Oslo proves a bumpy ride, with uneven singing and orchestral playing, saved by Katarina Bradić's captivating portrayal of the title heroine.

If you think you know Carmen, think you know Calixto Bieto, then you definitely should head to the Opera House and have your eyes opened on both counts.

Vienna State Opera's traditional production of Carmen managed to create an evening of both sumptious music and exciting drama on stage.

Director John Bell's chosen associations for his Carmen with Strindberg's Dance of Death and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf underlined an emphasis upon the fated couple's joint knowledge that nothing they can do will turn the tsunami that's leading to their deaths.

Paula Murrihy's role debut in Frankfurt not only proves to be infatuating, but also irresistibly cool.

Calixto Bieito’s production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen isn't without controversy. San Francisco Opera gave us raw sexuality unvarnished by any degree of social refinement.

The story still remained moving and the performance was musically pleasant, but the staging did not convince overall

For anyone seeing Carmen for the first time, this Royal Opera revival will have been a more than satisfactory evening. Old hands hoping to see something extra will find it in Hymel's Don José and Car's Micaëla, but not elsewhere.

Justina Gringyte is a fabulous Carmen in Scottish Opera's dark take on this most tuneful of operas. Large choruses, including children with cigarettes, and a strong supporting cast make this an enjoyable show.

Calixto Bieito's production of Carmen attempts to humanise the title character, but in doing so leaves the rest as caricatures.

WNO integrate dance and song to capture the soul of Carmen for the opening of their 60th anniversary season. 

“The very incarnation of vice” was how one critic described Célestine Galli-Marié’s Carmen at the opera’s 1875 Opéra Comique première. That description could equally be applied to Stéphanie d’Oustrac in Glyndebourne’s revival of David McVicar’s terrific production.

Calixto Bieito  updates the Carmen to the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and in Joan Anton Rechi’s revival, the results are often gritty and fierce, if unlikely to do anything for the Spanish tourist trade.

On a balmy evening in Milan, there was anticipation in the air as queues stretched way back for a sold out performance of Carmen. But a flat atmosphere soon fell in the auditorium itself, with lacklustre singing and confused staging to blame.

A traditional, reassuring production of Bizet's popular opera, without any odd staging ideas. 

Clémentine Margaine and Riccardo Massi star as the troubled lover's in the Deutsche Oper's classic, yet bloodless, production of Carmen.

The Welsh National Opera took to the Hippodrome stage for the Bristol leg of their UK tour ofCarmen. This was a revival of Welsh National Opera’s production in the late 1990s, co-produced with Scottish Opera.

The opening night of Paolo Pinamonti's second season as director of the Teatro de la Zarzuela had, in principle, its fair share of artistic incentives but unfortunately turned out to be a dismal season start.

The Met's revival of Carmen, with its rotating set, has a successful opening night with a strong cast, an insightful conductor, a superb orchestra and chorus, all working well as a team.

While there are jarring visual aspects to this production of Bizet's Carmen at the SemperOper, Dresden, this was an enjoyable performance which is a feast for the ears, if not the eyes.

Thoughtful character placement and a keen eye for detail contribute to a Carmen in Rome which is short on passion, but lovingly played. 

Dmytro Popov and Nancy Fabiola Herrera star in a traditional production of Carmen at the Sydney Opera House.

The ROH's revival of Carmen doesn't bring anything new to the opera, but a stellar cast and stylishly traditional production make it a very enjoyable evening.

Of the “ABCs” of opera (Aida, Bohème, and Carmen), Bizet’s masterpiece is the one that has made the transition to pop culture ubiquity. Surely even the most oblivious of listeners are able to whistle along to the “Habanera” and “Toreador Song”. Furthermore, the melodramatic story of exoticism, lust and rejection is one of the most popular of operatic tales.

One of my favorite things about opera in concert is the absence of director’s concept. Don’t take me wrong: I do enjoy a well-directed opera production with a concept.

There can be fewer more idyllic places in the world to see an opera. Behind the floating stage was Sydney’s harbour bridge and opera house; to the left, the lights of the central business district; and to the right, the glittering lights of the Northern Shore and the occasional ferry making its way to Circular Quay.

With an opera like Carmen, one never knows exactly what to expect. Recent trends (with English National Opera, for instance) have been to up the levels of raunchiness in an attempt to recreate the original scandale which this depiction of lower-class immorality in 19th-century Seville met with in Paris in 1875.

The packed hall at the Opéra de Bastille was in for a particularly interesting evening as they arrived for the Opéra National de Paris’ newest production of Bizet’s Carmen. This is an important event that brings out both the regular opera-goers and Carmen lovers, and those curious enough to buy a ticket to see the company’s latest creation.

Carmen has always been in my head as a “pretty” opera: lovely tunes, colourful setting, exotically alluring gypsy brushing up against hunky bullfighter and handsome soldier - not exactly French Grand Opera, perhaps, but a far cry from gritty verismo.

Carmen is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world, and with such a variety of interpretations out there it is always difficult to come up with a new one which is simultaneously inventive and effective.

Some operagoers contend that Carmen, the fatalistic gypsy doomed to die, is unlikable. She antagonizes other women at the cigarette factory. She seduces men with abandon. She makes an inexperienced corporal of the guard fall for her, manipulates him into abandoning his military career for a life of smuggling, and then heartlessly turns him out like a pesky stray.

Sultry and brassy, calculating and cruel, the character Carmen is, well, hard to like. By contrast, Bizet’s opéra comique of the same name playing in repertory at Glimmerglass Festival this summer is resoundingly popular, bringing audiences to standing ovations. The shining virtue of this Glimmerglass production is the music—especially the singing.

The story of Carmen is a tale of people at the bottom of the heap; factory workers, gypsies, bullfighters, ordinary soldiers, yet the romance of Spain and Bizet’s exuberant and unforgettable tunes have combined to give us a prettified, glamorous idea of Carmen, full of flamenco costumes, castanets, handsome toreadors and none of the rough edges.

In an opera of such popularity as Carmen by Georges Bizet, it wouldn’t be easy to please an audience likely to be inured to a variety of performances of arias such as Habanera and The Toreador’s Song. Yet Opera Australia made a thoughtfully constructed and well vindicated attempt.

The popularity of Bizet's 'Carmen' leaves many opera lovers knowing exactly what they want to hear and see before even entering the theatre.

Everybody’s favorite bad girl in the world of opera is back again for a spectacular romp of delights, mischief, seduction, and tragic culmination in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2010 revival of its 1999 production of Bizet’s Carmen.

La toute nouvelle production de Carmen proposée au Théâtre du Capitole relève d’un subtil mélange d‘innovation et de tradition.

Esta Carmen es una explosión de fuerza y destino, que sabe conjugar la violencia irrefrenable de unas pulsiones desatadas con la desolación de una tragedia inevitable.

Carmen de Bizet revient à Rome dans le magnifique parc des thermes de Caracalla.

Carmen dans la mise en scène de Calixto Bieto, présentée actuellement à l'Opéra Bastille, dépeint une héroïne victime du machisme et d'un certain ordre moral conservateur, tout en affirmant sa nécessité d'indépendance et la légimité de ses désirs de liberté.

Une prise de rôle attendue et convaincante dans une production offrant un bel équilibre vocal.