Tragic and Complex Carmen at Joffrey

I have a long history with Bizet’s Carmen on the Lyric Opera stage: my family regularly “supers”- that is, serves as a kind of non speaking, non singing extra in an opera, and we have been cigarette girls and rebels in more than one production on that stage.  A Lyric Carmen production was an early date for my husband and I.   Going way back,  Carmen at the Lyric was the very first opera I ever saw, as a middle schooler studying French.  I cannot imagine any contemporary middle school choosing this as an introduction to opera these days! So I was curious and excited to see how this story would be told in movement by the Joffrey Ballet and in particular by the controversial choreographer Liam Scarlett whose work is technically stunning, dramatically challenging, and doesn’t shy away from difficult deep topics. The Joffrey Ballet is now one of the finest dance companies in the world, with artists who possess virtuosic skill both in dance and acting, who are able to portray the most complex emotions even as they physically push boundaries of what a body can do. This company can tell a story like no other, as evidenced by many of their recent full length ballets taking on dramatic masterworks like Of Mice and Men and Othello and Liam Scarlett’s groundbreaking Frankenstein.

Many choreographers have tackled Carmen, often using the Bizet score.  Most familiar is the Roland Petit version which premiered in 1949 and has been performed by American Ballet Theatre. If you are curious, there are a few filmed versions that are easily available. This is popular and well traveled ground.

The Joffrey version is absolutely beautiful. The dancing is unforgettable.  The tunes are hummable and the live orchestra does the familiar score justice.  The casting I saw had Amanda Assucena in the title role: her dynamic and passionate Carmen is not yet hardened, and we truly believe that she loves José Pablo Castor Cuevas’s fresh faced Don José– it does not seem manipulative as in some versions of the tale. Their duet is passionate with Carmen taking the lead.  This not yet completely jaded Carmen goes with the arrogant Escamillo less enthusiastically, but pragmatically. Assucena’s acting is filled with subtle shifts so that we can see Carmen thinking and the beginnings of calculations. And we have Yumi Kanazawa’s delicate Micaëla who has steely determination, not timid country bumpkin vibes. She is a woman who will go wherever necessary to accomplish her mission but she cannot save the obsessed and foolish Don José.

As a ballet, the show is two and a half hours of flawless dancing.  As an evening of high art, I was impressed.  But something happened to me when watching that I find fascinating: I suddenly saw this very familiar tale in a completely new way, as if someone had given me an entirely different set of lenses, a set of eyes that has me questioning why THIS story now?

Carmen as a story, as an opera, and now a ballet, is nearly always created by men. Carmen’s entire point of view is obscured by how men tell her story. This production has an almost entirely male creative team except for the women who staged it.  While Carmen as a character does not conform to feminine standards of her day, her agency is confined to almost no actual choices.  And what is her day in this production: the set and men’s uniforms appear to nod to the 1930’s and perhaps indicate an armed conflict between activists and a leader whose statue dominates the square.  But the ladies are wearing proto corsets which fashion discarded no later than the 1920’s so I am not sure what the costumes are meant to say.  And let's be completely clear: when Carmen states her “choice” she is ultimately murdered for choosing someone else.  I was suddenly quite uncomfortable with the inherent misogyny of this story, and the incel like quality of Don José’s behavior and actions. I had to ask myself why I was raptly watching this story of violence to women: what does it say about me?  And as choreographed by Scarlett, the violence begins early– Escamillo forces Carmen to dance with him in the tavern, unlike some versions where it is she who chooses and seduces him.  Escamillo is a man who does not seek consent.  Scarlett seems to make fun of this toxic masculinity in the Toreador dance, with over the top posturing and hip swivels and cape flourishes but there is no humor in the exceptionally violent dance of Carmen’s murder by  Don José.  Not every version of Carmen shows the actual horrific scene in such graphic detail.  And some productions have the murderer dragged away by soldiers or condemned by the crowd.  Here we are left with the murder scene before the community has discovered it,  and a dazed killer engages in a kind of necrophiliac embrace.  Perhaps Scarlett wanted us to see and confront this violence. The story has roots not just in misogyny– Carmen is a “Gypsy” , a definition that is a racial slur now. She is portrayed as part of the Roma ethnic group historically ostracized in Europe, so there is racism as well. To see this story now, with scenes of violence bombarding us on the news nightly, and women's rights and bodily autonomy challenged in new ways, is to be deeply uncomfortable. 

Scarlett’s Carmen was created ten years ago when the current assault on women’s autonomy was not yet fully created, and two years before the Me Too movement became a global phenomenon.  Since programming decisions are made years in advance there was no way for the Joffrey to know we would be exactly here when the company premiered this work. Here we are though, and this work made me question so much about this piece, and this story: I will never see Carmen in the same light again.  If one of the purposes of art is to change the way we see our world, this piece is highly successful.  This is a Carmen and a moment that will challenge you intensely.

Liam Scarlett’s Carmen was premiered by the Joffrey Ballet on September 18th 2025 and performed through September 28th 2025 at the Civic Opera House, 20 North Wacker Drive, Chicago. For more information go to  https://joffrey.org/performances-and-tickets/25-26-season/carmen/

Photo by Cheryl Manning

No part of this review was created using AI

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