Barcelona Flamenco Ballet: Carmen

BFB reinterprets Bizet’s iconic work with flamenco elements that effectively adapt the original to the realities of contemporary society. “The values that make Carmen a woman of our time, along with the adaptation of music and flamenco ballet infused with the distinctive signature of David Gutiérrez, place the work within a new paradigm — that of the universal myth and 21st-century flamenco.”

Carmen is pain, passion and a cry for freedom, all emotions that flamenco represents; and of course the story by Prosper Mérimée is rooted in the flamenco world of Carmen the gypsy and her love for Escamillo the bullfighter. The show mixes flamenco singing (with contemporary flourishes of jazz) with the original music; the choreography fuses flamenco ballet with contemporary dance.

This show has been reviewed enthusiastically in Europe and elsewhere; it should appeal effectively to fans of opera, flamenco, classical dance, music, and theatre alike.

It runs for around 80 minutes, and three’s a second performance on 7 September.