Music Director/New Arrangements: Greg Arrowsmith
Director: Cameron Menzies
The latest updated staging of Carmen by Northern Ireland Opera at the Grand Opera House in Belfast, delivers a production that is unmistakably modern, yet pulses with the dangerous seductive energy that has made Bizet’s opera endure for 150 years. This production embraces the opera’s themes – freedom, desire, violence, and fate with a clarity that feels contemporary.
The title role of Carmen played by Ruby Dibble is re-imagined not as a mythic femme fatale but as a fiercely free-spirited woman surrounded by male patriarchy that seeks to imprison her. The director uses a rope to symbolise the captured Carmen who understands the risk of her choices, as she struggles with desire and sexual captivity in a duet with Don Jose played by Noah Stewart. Vocally Stewart portrays a lyric warmth when he appeals to Carmen in the Flower Song, exposing his vulnerability. Don Jose embraces the tragic heart of the opera when he travels from a disciplined soldier to a shattered obsessive lover driven to the final confrontation.
Escamillo, played by Thomas Chenhall, is the direct opposite to Don Jose. He embodies confidence, glamour and is a celebrity bullfighter adored by the crowd. He represents a life that Carmen aspires to – freedom, risk, and spectacle. Chenhall makes that appeal so believable in his confident vocalising of the Toreador Song.
Micaela, played by Mary McCabe, is Carmen’s dramatic opposite – gentle, sincere and morally steady. Mary McCabe delivers all these qualities with warmth, purity, and vocal clarity.
The set design by Niall McKeever is strikingly minimalistic using stark lighting, industrial props to create a world of cold steel and the poverty of the working class of Seville consigned to exist in a caged environment. The cigarette factory becomes a modern workplace charged with tension and innate frustration that is both contemporary and timeless.
Musically the production remains faithful to Bizet’s score. The conductor Greg Arrowsmith, and Joanne Quigley McParland (Concertmaster) in their interpretation have given familiar melodies a fresh sense of pathos and propulsion that draws on crisp rhythms.
Movement choreographed by Jennifer Rooney blends flamenco inspired rhythms that crackle with energy. The kinetic style of dance sequences culminates in the third act in symbols; flag waving, grotesque masks redolent of Picasso’s Guernica with its tortured figures dominated by the head of a bull.
Direction by Cameron Menzies is compelling in its balance. It honours Bizet’s music and dramatic architecture, and it evaluates what it feels like for a woman today at the mercy of coercive control and sexual violence. In doing so – this production restores the opera’s rawness, danger, and tragic beauty.
However, I do have a reservation around a particular part of the stage set in the shape of a giant screen which rotates and dominates the second act. It frustrates because it continually draws our attention away from the action and upstages the magnificent chorus. I spoke with audience members after the show who also expressed frustration because they were unable to see beyond the enormous white screen. Props and setting are key to the overall shape of a production and therefore should assist and not detract.
All aspects of this production by Northern Ireland Opera speak directly to the present moment. It does not just retell the tragic tale of Carmen – it re-ignites it.
Reviewed: 19th Sept 2026.
