Carmen curse put to the test
COC’s last staging in 1993 was disaster
MARTIN KNELMAN
Richard Bradshaw is finally ready to lift the curse and bring Carmen back to Toronto next fall as part of the Canadian Opera Company’s final season at the Hummingbird Centre.
Georges Bizet’s hot-blooded saga about the Spanish gypsy and jealous soldier is one of the greatest crowd-pleasers in the opera repertory, but at the COC a black cloud has been hanging over it for the past 12 years.
The reason: The COC’s last production of Carmen, in 1993, was a disaster that helped mire the company in debt and led to the sacking of Bradshaw’s predecessor, Brian Dickie.
This time, Bradshaw explained with a sly smile at a COC press conference yesterday, Carmen (opening Sept. 29) will be “firmly and recognizably set in Seville.”
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