Carmen and the Critics

I went to see *Carmen* last week with some trepidation. A long-time passionate admirer of Sally's films, I had read some of the critics on *Carmen* and wondered whether maybe this wasn't up to the films. Maybe Sally just didn't have enough recent experience with the stage? I was also taking my 19-year-old nephew, who was a total novice to opera - what would he think? Would he understand it?
Silly me for taking any notice at all of the critics. I should have known better from the shocking prejudices of many critics of the films. From the beginning to the end of *Carmen* this was the Sally I knew and loved, drawing electrifying performances from all those on stage - not just the stars - and giving new and provocative life to what in other hands might be a tired old cash cow. Musically this *Carmen* was of a very high order, as even many of the hostile critics have been forced to admit, but it was the production that will remain with me for many years as one of the most profound stage productions I've ever seen (I'm actually going again, so enthused was I. And if it's revived next year - as it should - I'll be amongst the first to buy tickets).
I needn't have been concerned about my nephew either. He didn't understand or even see everything but he was genuinely moved and intellectually thrilled, eager to discuss and find out. This was a production that spoke to him, from the Amy Winehouse hairdos of Mercedes and Frasquita to the extremely apt displays of masculine potency in the break dancing, from the surveillance cameras to the mobile phones and the celebrity glitz of Escamillo.
This is a *Carmen* that addresses those who live in 2007 cities and who are willing to look out beyond the tinted windows of limosines. It doesn't reinforce the identities of those who prefer the cosy homosociality of poker games or the conspicuous 4x4 consumption of tudorbethan estates or who collect exquisite antiques and refuse to allow their aged parents to move into care homes because it would eat into their inheritance. This is a production that instead asks ethical questions about what we, the audience do, that promotes those little tyrannnies and cruelties and scotomies that collectively add up to huge social problems.
Both my nephew and I were shocked out of our complacency (which, let's face it - is so much easier than constant self-awareness and criticism), as layer upon layer of our masculinist assumptions and tricks to gain and maintain power over women were held up to us as in a mirror. No wonder the critics hated it! Weren't they all men? To see a man trying to upstage a woman as she sings her showstopper, as Pablo Veron did to Alice Coote's very sexy Habanera, can't be a comfortable experience for anyone who denies that men do that to women every day. Here was a man who was going to steal her limelight - he was trying to interrupt her, disrupt her. Isn't that what we do to women every day, gents? But this woman, this Carmen, isn't having it: she keeps singing. For Sally has rescued *Carmen* from the attacks on it by those feminist critics of opera who have accused it of being yet another sadistic spectacle of a woman who tries to take change of her life and is punished for her audacity. Sally's Carmen is rather a feminist icon who uses the only capital she has - he body and her voice - to survive as best she can and brings on her own death when she's had enough, when she realises that there is, in fact, no real way out. This Carmen self-determines.
In short, this was a production that made us think and self-reflect, as well as move us. It was a production where intellect and passion, both of remarkable intensity, were not opposites but one and the same, as decades of feminist (and, indeed, much psychoanalytic) research show they are anyway (though we find it safer to justify our feelings with specious reasoning). It was a production that on the night we went, received ecstatic applause. And judging from the lively discussion in the intervals and afterwards, it really did make the audience in general think and reflect, not just a middle-aged academic uncle and his clever young nephew.
Thank you, Sally, for the gift which your production granted us - a chance to think - something no ticket price can be tied to.