Italy gives world-famous opera Carmen a defiant new ending in stand against violence to women

Gaelle Arquez as Carmen and Scott Hendricks as Escamillo perform during the rehearsal of the opera 'Carmen' prior to a festival in Austria, 2017.
Gaelle Arquez as Carmen and Scott Hendricks as Escamillo perform during the rehearsal of the opera 'Carmen' prior to a festival in Austria, 2017 Credit:  Johannes Simon/Getty 

One of the world’s best-loved operas has been given a radically different ending in Italy, with the heroine killing her tormentor rather than being killed herself, in a stand against violence to women.

In what is believed to be a world first, a production of Bizet’s Carmen will see the gypsy Carmen shoot her thwarted admirer Don José with a pistol that she grabs off him, rather than being stabbed to death by him.

The dramatic departure from operatic orthodoxy is an attempt to shine the spotlight on the modern-day abuse and mistreatment of women, an issue given added resonance by the outrage over the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump.

The new version of Carmen will open at Florence’s opera house this weekend, with the first few nights already sold out.

“As far as we know it is the first time that the ending to Carmen has been changed,” the opera house’s Paolo Klun told The Telegraph.

“We think it’s important that the theatre should not be a conservative place of musical culture, it should not be a museum. It’s a place where debate can be initiated. Carmen was written 150 years ago in a very different cultural context. Times change.”

The stage set for the forthcoming production of Bizet's Carmen in Florence. Instead of being set in 19th century Spain, it is set in a Romany gypsy camp in Italy in the 1980s.
The stage set for the forthcoming production of Bizet's Carmen in Florence. Instead of being set in 19th century Spain, it is set in a Romany gypsy camp in Italy in the 1980s Credit: Teatro del Maggio Musicale

The producers said they had changed the denouement of the story in part to protest at the large number of Italian women who are killed each year by jealous husbands, boyfriends and lovers.

So frequent are such murders that Italians have a name for the phenomenon – “femminicidio”, or femicide.

Sociologists and campaigners say it is driven by men feeling threatened by the greater freedoms and enhanced economic independence that many Italian women now enjoy after decades of being seen as pliable possessions.

With horrific cases of domestic violence coming to light almost every month, the directors of the work said they were uncomfortable with the idea of audiences applauding the final scene, in which Carmen is stabbed to death and lies motionless on the stage.

“At a time when our society is having to confront the murder of women, how can we dare to applaud the killing of a woman?” said Cristiano Chiarot, the head of the opera house, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

“I believe one can remain faithful to the spirit of the opera whilst taking certain liberties – as happened in classical times, when there were various versions of the most famous myths, without their original meaning being compromised,” he told La Repubblica newspaper.

Leo Muscato, the opera’s director, was initially resistant to the idea of changing the ending.

“The death of Carmen is the engine that drives the opera, why reverse the situation?” he said.

“Then I understood that what Chiarot was calling for was reasonable. The theme of death in the opera has a strong masculine element – the woman must sacrifice herself in order to save her freedom. It is a point of view that today makes no sense.”

Instead of being stabbed to death in the final scene, Carmen will shoot her tormentor Don Jose in the new production in Florence.
Instead of being stabbed to death in the final scene, Carmen will shoot her tormentor Don Jose in the new production in Florence Credit: Teatro del Maggio Musicale

Although he wrote Carmen in 1875, Georges Bizet set the drama against the exotic backdrop of Spain in the 1830s.

The directors of the Florence version have taken a similar step back in time, setting the opera in a ramshackle, litter-strewn Romany gypsy camp on the outskirsts of an Italian city in the 1980s.

Carmen is a modern-day gypsy woman making ends meet by working in a factory, while Don José is an abusive police officer.

In Bizet’s original story, Don José is a naïve soldier who is lured away from his military duties and his childhood sweetheart by the fiery gypsy girl Carmen.

But she then falls for the handsome bull-fighter Escamillo, driving Don Jose wild with jealousy.

The last act of the opera is set outside the bullring in Seville, where Carmen is stabbed to death by Don José.

An opera in four acts, Carmen premiered in Paris in March, 1875. It was based on a novella of the same name by Prosper Merimee.

It initially shocked and scandalised audiences for its realism, portraying the lives of ordinary people such as factory workers, smugglers, soldiers and gypsies.

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