D: Christian Weise
Is there any future for Carmen? It’s a racist and sexist opera about the fall of a good man ensnared by a bad woman. Ultimately, the Romani Carmen and her disruptive, exotic sexuality has to be eliminated. Poor Don José, seduced and abandoned by this fickle creature, has no choice. What excuse is there to reproduce such a narrative? Georges Bizet’s beautiful music? Or that Carmen is one of the most famous depictions of a Romani in popular culture?
Is there a way to reclaim the work – and Carmen herself – for the right side of history? It’s the bind that the Romani performers Lindy Larsson and Riah Knight took on with Christian Weise in staging this work. Larsson’s self-aware Carmen breaks down the situation, addressing the audience directly, ultimately alighting on the idea that Carmen must die in this performance so that she might never die again. While this production doesn’t quite represent a future beyond reproducing the 19th-century assumptions that plague this piece, the opera – like all Weise’s work – presents physical and musical performances full of wit and verve.
Larsson vamps vivaciously as Carmen and Knight sings in her role as the virginal Micaela. Via Jikeli proves once more her great comic chops as a buffoonish Don José. While it might not have answered the riddle of how to ethically revive the opera, Carmen does provide even more evidence that Weise is among the most consistently exciting makers of musical theatre in this city.
- Carmen, Apr 8-10, Maxim Gorki Theater, in German with English surtitles, details.
