Stage director Calixito Bieito’s 1999 production of Carmen made its way to the Opéra Bastille in 2017, one year after its performances in San Francisco, and three years after its 2014 performances in Bilbao where Mr. Bieito is now the general director.
The San Francisco and Paris Bieito Carmens are greatly edited (no fellatio, no pissing, no nudity, no gang rape, no child abuse and no unbridled brutality), which is to say that Bieito’s operatic world does not really exist in these big-city versions.
Carmen herself just now in Paris was 51 year-old French diva Stephanie d’Oustrac. Mme. d’Oustrac is a performer of great intensity who in the initial stages of her career sang only Baroque repertory. She took on Carmen in 2010 [and Charlotte in Werther in 2018], performing Carmen at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2015 and at the Aix Festival in 2017 (though in the Tcherniakov adaptation). Now, finally, her own Carmen arrives in Paris.
It is a Carmen of enormous intensity, overtly sexual, oozing sensuality, and absolutely cold blooded. The d’Oustrac Carmen is suicidal from the first moment of her Habanera. That all these complexities worked in the Paris Bieito production just now is questionable. Though Bieito himself staged Mme. d’Oustrac In his Madrid Carmen back in 2017. The current Paris Carmen was staged by an assistant director, Yves Lenoir, thus taking a step beyond or behind the original director’s vision.
Calixto Bieito creates atmospheres, one recalls the public and private bathrooms of his Un ballo in maschera, the intestines of his Wozzeck, the excrement and vomit of his From the House of the Dead. While Bieito’s Paris Carmen is purged of much of this world, it does still reel from the feel of squalor and brutish aspiration of the contemporary European gypsy world. Mme. d’Oustrac’s Carmen is of such intensity that it overwhelms this atmosphere.
In her competition for attention with Bieito’s Paris Carmen she wins, and this is obviously no small accomplishment!
Mme. d’Oustrac’s Act I Habanera (L’amour est un oiseau rebelle) was softly sung, almost chanted to herself, to the point that we spectators did not know if we had actually heard it, or if we should applaud. By the time we got to the Seguidilla it was apparent that this Carmen was not about Bieito’s intense atmospheres, it was about Carmen. The Seguidilla was met with tepid applause, perhaps because we had already become too hopelessly involved with this disillusioned, though exceedingly sexy cigarette girl.
Jose was sung by Florida born, American dramatic tenor Russell Thomas. Mr. Thomas sings the big tenor roles around the world — Otello in Los Angeles, Don Alvaro (Forza) in Paris, Fidelio in San Francisco. Though he has often collaborated with stage director Peter Sellers in Salzburg, he is a performer of limited dimension who has an impressive voice. His was a Jose of vocal heft but little, even no depth. As well Mr. Thomas was confronted by a Carmen for whom love was an illusion she was well beyond, rendering his infatuation flaccid.
Micaela was to have been performed by Egyptian soprano Amina Edris (San Francisco finished), but she was said to be ill, thus the role was taken by her cover, American soprano (Paris finished) Hanah Lobel-Torres. Mlle. Lobel-Torres has a somewhat small, coloratura-like voice. She did not project the inner strength to make her a Carmen antagonist, though her Je Dis was beautifully sung.
Escamillo was sung by Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, — perfect casting! Mr. Schrott was obviously having an off-night, seemingly absent, or maybe he knew he was superfluous to Carmen’s ugly end. While he was obviously agile enough to have the smuggler’s scene knife fight with Jose, jumping from car top to car top, Jose was obviously not, robbing the altercation of its usual, edgy excitement (two singers of unlikely stature attempting Bieto’s idea of physical comedy).
In Bilbao Mercedes was Lillas Pastia’s wife, their child, a young girl, in tow. The Bieito Paris production keeps this child to perform the second act gypsy dance rather that the usual flamenco dancer. This Bieito moment can be a very poignant, the child imitating the blatant sexuality of the dance, portending a life based on using sex to gain whatever stature. Just now in Paris it was a dance in formal balletic terms, carefully executed on point by a young ballerina, rendering the scene impotent.
Mercedes was performed by Turkish mezzo soprano Seray Pinar, a member of Paris Opera’s Troupe Lyrique (encouraging early career, promising singers), as was Frasquita sung by Russian soprano Margarita Polonskaya, robbing these characters of any possible gypsy stature. The same may be said of the Zuniga, also of the Troupe Lyrique, performed by Canadian-Armenian bass baritone Vartan Gabrielian.
The Remendado and the Dancairo were of more interest, sung respectively by French tenor Loic Félix and French baritone Florent Karrer. The second act quintet, one of opera’s great moments, was impeccably executed, though it received no applause.
Overseeing all this from the pit was Canadian born, Juilliard finished conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson. The production, denied its atmospheres, could not be saved by the conductor.
Michael Milenski
Opéra Bastille, Paris, France, February 13, 2026.
All photos copyright Benoîte Fanton / Opéra national de Paris.