Stage direction: Lotte de Beer

Premiere: September 21, 2024

"Love stays away, you wait and wait; when least expected, there it is!"
She is said to seduce all the men with her free-spiritedness and her Spanish folklore, as she sings "Love is a rebellious bird" … Until she is killed by one of the men.

"Is Carmen really the free, independent woman we think she is, or is she rather the prisoner of the very myth of the free, independent woman? Isn’t it precisely the men who attribute this free-spiritedness to her, so that their conquest of her is all the more rewarding? Carmen tries to make decisions that go in an unexpected, unconventional direction. But is that the definition of freedom? Isn’t the consistent decision to go against convention also a kind of straitjacket?" (Lotte de Beer)