Carmen Left Me Confused

Carmen, written by George Bizet and directed by Eugene Tzigane, attempted to stage the 1875 opera in an updated and relatable way by modernizing the performance. In this attempt, however, the opera fell sorely short: poor costume design and choreography combined to make the performance severely underwhelming.

Perhaps the most confusing—and ultimately most disappointing—part of the production was the costume design. It seemed as if the costume designer, Zana Bosnjak, was trying to modernize the production through the costumes, but any sense of time or place was completely lost: some of the costumes were very obviously 1950’s mockups, some were modern day fashions, others were 1920’s flapper dresses, etc. It wasn’t only that the costumes had no cohesion with one another—the costumes also didn’t even seem to make sense internally. For example, one character wore a 1950’s ensemble, complete with a waist-high A-line skirt and a cap sleeve top, which was for some reason paired with 2000’s-era rope soled espadrille wedges.

The exaggerated platinum blond wigs worn by Frasquita and Mercedes—closely resembling what one would find in the dressing room of a mid-grade strip club—were also extremely confusing, but perhaps not as confusing as the decision to put a chorus singer in the Midwestern meth-addict uniform of cutoff jean shorts with an ill-fitting baby doll tank top and athletic slides. Yes, athletic slides. Carmen herself was heavy-handedly costumed in a 55-year-old librarian’s idea of what a badass young woman would wear these days—her halter dress, leather jacket, low-slung belt and leggings felt less like the wardrobe of an exacting temptress and more like what Dog the Bounty Hunter’s wife would wear on date night. The costumes seemed to be the prime attempt to modernize the opera, but a glaring lack of any aesthetic sensibility or direction left the audience terribly confused and visually offended.

The performance also fell short in its choreography. The beginning of the opera had many promising moments, like one scene in which drunken Frasquita and Mercedes combined small repetitive movements into an understated symphony of movement. However, the biggest and most important choreographic moments were not so understated or so successful. The final scene, in which Don José stabs Carmen to death, was painfully disappointing. This scene is the culmination of all of the opera’s drama—Don José is so unstable and wounded so as to brutally murder the woman he loves—and should be riveting. This, however, was made completely impossible by the fact that this most important and dramatic climax of the performance was performed with both Carmen’s and Don José’s backs to the audience. This decision felt like a lazy way to bypass the technical difficulty of performing a stabbing scene onstage, and was then followed up by Carmen performing a drawn-out choreographed stumble until she ultimately and unconvincingly fell down. It was quite an unsatisfying end to the performance.

Carmen is not a show I would recommend. Though the music was excellent—Don José’s confession of love was extremely powerful and beautiful—the disjointed costuming and poorly-choreographed ending left me more confused than pleased.