No sense of direction

The new production of Bizet’s Carmen at the Royal Opera has received mixed reviews. It shouldn’t have done. They should have been unmitigatedly hostile, indignant, outraged — except that all those reactions would almost certainly have delighted the director, Barrie Kosky. What might please him less is the accusation of tedium, of making what often seems an unsinkable work into a colossal bore. This Carmen lasts for three-and-a-half hours and feels as long as that after the first 20 minutes.

The whole and only set is a stage-wide flight of 16 steep stairs, up and down which the cast has to run at frightening speeds. As Jakub Hrusa, the conductor, dashed into the opening bars, hectic rather than brilliant, one wondered what might be added on-stage. But the Prelude stopped halfway through, and a semi-whispering female voice gave us a couple of introductory sentences. Carmen appeared, dressed as a toreador, and I wondered if we were to see a gender-bending version.