Alert, inventive and thoroughly entertaining: Scottish Opera’s Carmen reviewed

Scottish Opera’s new Carmen begins at the end. ‘Take me away: I have killed her,’ intones a voiceover and as the prelude swaggers out, José is in a police interrogation cell, where an investigator is attempting to piece together his story. In other words, it’s CSI: Seville. In converting Meilhac and Halévy’s libretto into a police procedural, director John Fulljames has created a Carmen that’s ideally gauged to a TV-literate audience: told in flashback, with any confusion swiftly cleared up by spoken dialogue that never feels clunky because interrogation is central to the genre.

And unless you want to be surprised by the dénouement, it works a treat. Is that whopping spoiler really such a big deal? I’m in two minds: Opera subscribers might roll their eyes, but a significant proportion of any given opera audience will inevitably comprise first-timers. Of course the cliché-busting updated Carmen is itself one of contemporary opera’s great clichés.