No, this is not “just another Carmen”! Rather, it is a “Carmen jondo,” where a flamenco cantaora responds to the opera singers with all her depth. Where Israel Galván embodies the three main characters with his futuristic flamenco. Where Don José, Carmen, and the toreador challenge each other, fight each other, and love each other through the dancer's body, which becomes the field of all passions. Bizet's music, reduced to its essence, is performed by Zahia Ziouani's Divertimento orchestra, which turns classical music into a vast field of emotional adventures. And to definitively surprise Bizet and perhaps console him, who, so affected by the rejection of critics, died of sadness before seeing the success of his work, Israel Galván invites the unlikely Mieskuoro Huutajat, the famous Finnish choir of “howlers.” The sudden and brief intrusion of a group that embodies, in its own way, the same thirst for freedom as Carmen!

Thomas Hahn