Scalding hot at its first outing in 2012, Catalan director Calixto Bieito’s Carmen for English National Opera had cooled to lukewarm by its 2015 return – and now (to 27 February) it’s being served up positively tepid.

Carmen
English National Opera, London Coliseum

Scalding hot at its first outing in 2012, Catalan director Calixto Bieito’s Carmen for English National Opera had cooled to lukewarm by its 2015 return – and now (to 27 February) it’s being served up positively tepid.

It’s not the fault of the production, set in the dying days of Franco’s Spain, which still holds the memory of its original power and anger. Systematically dismantling all the touristic tat and the colourful, sexual baggage surrounding the piece and its central femme fatale, Bieito and designer, Alfons Flores, instead give us a Spain whose flamenco dresses are stained, whose bulls are mere advertising hoardings, whose bullfighters are polyester-clad posers.

Grubby swarms of children play in the dirt; soldiers trade drills for lewd gestures when a women walks past; Lillas Pastia holds court in a scrubby wasteland parking lot. A miasma of heat and sweat and desire can’t hide the violence that stirs just below the surface.

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