Vienna mounts woke Carmen
OperaA hostile reception was expected for Lotte de Beer’s new Carmen at the Volksoper, where the audience is treated to a frumpish heroine dressed head-to-toe in black and having little by way of the familiar character.
The French-born mezzo-soprano Katia Ledoux is a member of the Volksoper ensemble.
Stefan Ender wrote in Der Standard: ‘Ledoux’s Carmen seems somehow… woke. You could also imagine her doing gender studies with a latte macchiato with oat milk, when she’s not busy loving and suffering at the Volksoper as visual material in the director’s world of interpretation.’
photo: Barbara Pálffy, Vienna Volksoper
“Frumpish”… really, Norman?
It’s not woke enough. It should be a man dressed in women’s clothes in the role of Carmen… or at least someone who is gender curious!
Is anyone truly surprised by Lotte de Beer? She epitomises the concept of an “Emperor’s new clothes” director. Honestly, I’d argue she single-handedly staged what most would agree was the worst production of Aida at the Paris Opera! And to think, they’d assembled some of the world’s top singers, only for them to be subjected to that utter nonsense. I can only assume they didn’t walk out because, well, it was during Covid, and they clearly needed the money! Truly dreadful!
If Vienna was pissed off by Schnittke’s creepy arrangement of Silent Night they would be pissed off by anything
https://youtu.be/oJhs0dS61tI?si=CMtxfJx3QlkTVUz3&t=126
The production can’t possibly be as trite and boring as the clichés trotted out in Ender’s review.
Norman Lebrecht is hereby awarded the title of Knight Commander of the Euphemistic Understatement.
So this Carmen is woke because she’s not showing cleavage?
Putting Carmen in a dress during the third act has never made sense because she is working as a smuggler under the cover of night.
In the first act, we do have historic photos and engravings of what tobacco factories looked like; while women may have worn dresses, they covered their whole bodies and were loose fitting.
It’s only in the last act that Carmen should be dressed up.
Carmen is supposed to be a sexy and alluring trollop who rolls cigarettes in a factory, not a militant covered lesbian. The producer obviously doesn’t know her opera, or ignored the entire libretto in this production.
Thanks for the warning – I’ll either buy a cheap seat with very limited view for the nozze or prefer the recital (Lukas Sternath) in the Musikverein on the same evening in June – hopefully “Die Fledermaus” isn’t destroyed as well in the future at the VO!
Oh jeez, now this has also entered the operatic world…
Do these people have to destroy everything with their “wokeness”? Having no clue about the words genuine meaning btw…
Maybe it’s not the color of her outfit that they’re really bothered about.
Go figure. Volksoper’s new GM is a woke feminist.