Review: US premiere of Liam Scarlett’s Carmen opens The Joffrey Ballet’s 70th anniversary season in Chicago amid a myriad of milestones

Familiarity breeds contempt, especially among opera fanatics faced with seeing their umpteenth Aida, La bohème or Carmen. But those who know these warhorses like the back of their hand are in for a perspective-altering jolt if they catch Carmen at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago now through Sept. 28.

No, the Lyric Opera of Chicago is not producing a boundary-pushing version of Georges Bizet’s popular opera this season – the Lyric last revived its own traditional 2000 production of Carmen in 2023. Instead, The Joffrey Ballet is staging the U.S. premiere of Carmen by the late British choreographer Liam Scarlett as part of a myriad of milestone anniversaries.

The Joffrey Ballet is celebrating both its 70^th anniversary season and the 30^th anniversary of the company’s 1995 move from New York to Chicago. Also, Bizet’s eternal opera Carmen turns 150 this year, while Scarlett’s full-length story ballet version turns 10.

Ballet adaptations of Carmen are plentiful – especially those with British ties. Matthew Bourne‘s revamped The Car Man was first revved up on a UK tour in 2000, while a one-act version of Carmen was created by dancer-turned-choreographer Carlos Acosta for London’s Royal Ballet in 2015. Scarlett’s full-length Carmen story ballet premiered in Oslo with the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet. It’s this same production with appropriately grimy sets and costumes by Jon Bausor that is playing the Windy City.

From the start, Scarlett defies expectations by eschewing Bizet’s famous prelude. Instead, a snare drum ominously sounds as projections of tarot cards tumble down on a textured red scrim curtain. It partially lifts for the conflicted title character (Victoria Jaiani on opening night) to wearily step forth and interpret a series of tarot cards that do not bode well for her.

Fans of the opera should know that even though Bizet’s music is used for the ballet, orchestrator and arranger Martin Yates has sliced, diced and rearranged the music of Carmen to suit Scarlett’s storytelling sans singing. Yates has also inserted rousing selections from two orchestral suites drawn from Bizet’s incidental music for the 1872 play L’Arlésienne to help pad out the score.

While it’s no surprise that many musical dramatic moments in the ballet and opera correspond, others do not. For instance, when the lowly soldier Don José (an ardent Alberto Velazquez) dances an Act I solo expressing his initial infatuation with Carmen in Act I of the ballet, it’s to the music of Micaëla’s famed prayer of bravery (“Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante”) in Act III of the opera. Then the same music appropriately returns in the ballet as the longing ingenue Micaëla (a lovely Gayeon Jung) infiltrates the smugglers’ camp to deliver important news to Don José, as in the opera.   

Scarlett’s ballet of Carmen also shakes things up by being updated away from the 19th century to the 1930s, so the Spanish Civil War historically informs the action. This same 20th-century conflict was used for Sir Richard Eyre‘s 2009 production of Carmen for The Metropolitan Opera and for director Rob Ashford’s 2014 co-production shared by Houston Grand Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. But Scarlett and production designer Bausor appear to make more of the political divide at the top of the ballet. From the looming fascist statue in the Seville square to the soldiers being stationed both outside and inside the Act I cigarette factory, everything feels more like a dreaded police state in this Carmen. Fans of Bizet’s opera might also be surprised at how the Scarlett version has alternately simplified or complicated some of the situations and characters’ motivations.

Audience perspectives on the title Roma woman at the centre of the drama have shifted through the decades. No doubt Carmen was initially seen in the 19^th century as an evil seductress who ruins the lives of men, while nowadays she’s held up as a free-spirited force of nature who gets destroyed by a controlling stalker. This ballet Carmen is more complicated. Due to desperate living conditions, Carmen clearly greases palms and passes contraband to select military officials early in the ballet. She’s also more corrupted by money and the promise of easy living, as Scarlett makes clear when she rejects the blossoming love of the lowly Don José in favour of the riches promised by the flashy celebrity toreador Escamillo (a full-of-swagger turn with a bracing undercurrent of menace by the very tall Dylan Gutierrez).

Scarlett’s choreography, expertly re-staged by Kristen McGarrity, Laura Morera and Lauren Strongin, is particularly rousing throughout Carmen. There are many great ensemble sequences, like in the Act II tavern showing off the high-leaping skills of the Bohemian soloists of Fernando Duarte, Xavier Núñez and Zachary Manske. The multitude of cape-swirling bull ring toreadors in the final act was also a campy delight. And passion exudes all the partnering, especially from the Act I sequence when a wrist-shackled Carmen convinces Don José to free her – she clearly knows her way around a rope when it comes to seduction. The final duet that ends with Carmen’s death is also disturbing and heart-wrenching.

The entire Joffrey Ballet company impresses as they embody the music and sensuality of the characters of Carmen through pure movement. Opera singers who are slated to appear in revivals of Carmen can certainly learn a lot from the Joffrey dancers to inform the physicality of their own future performances. And for those hard-to-please opera fans who have their own high expectations of what makes for a great performance of Carmen, taking in Scarlett’s story ballet version will inevitably be an eye-opening experience. Carmen may be a tried-and-true warhorse, but Bizet’s timeless tunes endure as they remain a font of inspiration – especially as seen in Scarlett’s impressive story ballet adaptation.    

 The Joffrey Ballet’s U.S. premiere of Liam Scarlett’s Carmen continues until 28 September at the Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago.
For more information, visit joffrey.org.

Scott C. Morgan

Chicago-based Scott C. Morgan is an avid opera and theatergoer. He is a frequent freelance contributor to the Windy City Times, and previously served as that publication’s freelance theater editor from 2008 to 2018. He also worked primarily as an arts writer for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago from 2004 to 2022.

He has raised donations as an endurance race runner for AIDS Foundation Chicago via its charity training program Team to End AIDS from 2011 to 2023, and also co-hosted two Opera Tunes fundraisers at Chicago’s famed Sidetrack Video Bar in 2019.