Royal Opera House
Bizet’s Carmen
Encore Screening
Olivier award-winning director Damiano Michieletto's searing new production evokes all the passion and heat of Bizet's score. Conductor Antonello Manacorda leads a stellar international casts, headlined by Aigul Akhmetshina.
One of opera’s most notorious free spirits, Carmen is a rebel with a passionate cause – she wants to live and love in her own way. Though Carmen warns Don José not to love her, he gives up his job, reputation and girlfriend Micaëla for her. Soon bored of Don José's obsessive nature, Carmen moves on to celebrity toreador Escamillo. What she doesn’t anticipate is the searing jealousy that will be unleashed in her former lover.
Drawing from the opera's setting of Seville, Bizet’s unforgettable score boasts a host of Spanish-inspired melodies, including Carmen's sensual ‘Habanera’ and ‘Seguidilla’ arias, and Don José's tender ‘Flower Song’, ‘La fleur que tu m’as jétée’ (The flower that you threw to me). The composer’s gift for writing catchy melodies reaches its peak in the flamboyance and masculinity of Escamillo’s ‘Toreador Song’, one of the most instantly recognisable arias in all classical music.