How do you solve a problem like the opera? With motorbikes and rock’n’roll, it seems

Opera Australia’s new world-first outdoor production of Carmen is thoroughly ambitious in more ways than one – it aims to give the artform of opera a modern, feminist, punk-rock makeover. The scene is set on a huge industrial stage on Cockatoo Island (a 15-minute ferry ride from the city), complete with dazzling fireworks, motorcycle stunts and pop-up bars. Director Liesel Badorrek places the action in a timeless “rock’n’roll space” that encapsulates rebellion and anti-establishment sentiment. This new production aims to rebel against its problematic past, bringing a new, strong, independent Carmen to the stage – as sung alternately by Opera Australia’s principal mezzo soprano Sian Sharp and Carmen Topciu.

As self-professed theatre and opera nerds, Time Out was excited to speak to Badorrek and Sharp about how they’re looking to change the opera game, one rock’n’roll Carmen at a time. First, we had a chat about our mutual love of opera, and theatre, those wonderful, live participatory art forms...

What is it that you love about opera? 

Sian: When people experience operatic singing unamplified it is a very powerful experience that can really cut you to the quick. There's a connection there that is sometimes not achieved [with other art forms]... the power of the voice to reach out across an orchestra and hit the back wall of a 2,000-seat theatre is quite a feat.

Liesel: That combination of the orchestral music and the vocals is so beautiful, it's incredibly powerful emotionally and when you add to that the possibility for spectacle… And when you see it live, it has an astonishing and awesome quality and an “uber-theatricality” that is really thrilling. When it’s really working, opera has the power to affect like nothing else does. 

_{Photograph: Opera Australia/Hamilton Lund}

Why have you chosen to restage Carmen?

Liesel: Every song is a banger for a start. The ‘Habanera’ is unbeatable, the ‘Seguidilla’, the ‘Toreador Song’. Even the Entr’actes are beautiful, the music is unparallelled and can appeal to even a novice. Also, it’s the story of an abusive relationship, and that's timely. Until we're living in a whole new world where there isn't that kind of intimate violence, then that story is current. Sian and I have worked really closely together on finding a Carmen that is a woman that we know and really love… that magnetic and exciting woman who is vulnerable and playful and cheeky and wild and thumbs their nose at rules.

Sian, how does it feel to play this role of Carmen? 

Sian: I think it's a completely relatable reading of the opera. The mere fact that I wear pants the whole time and flat shoes means I can express a [new] physicality, and I'm not being constrained by a costume. All of the Carmen traits that Liesel wanted to highlight are already within me… I've shocked myself with what I've been able to achieve. I think it is without doubt the highlight of my 20-year operatic career so far. 

Carmen’s original version is problematic in its portrayal of women. But, there were some productions in 2018, one directed by Australian Barrie Kosky, that changed the ending. Another in Gloucestershire this year also added a character and even changed the language from French to English. How does this production work with and rebel against Carmen’s history? 

Liesel: I've read extensively about other versions of Carmen, and I'm super interested in the fact that people are looking at that ending and going, “We have to change it, we can't put that on stage anymore.” We don't change the ending because that is a story that often plays out, not just on stage, but in our lives. For me, saying she's gonna kill him won't change anything or the way anyone really thinks about the story. Instead, I wanted to challenge an audience to ask themselves why we keep going to see stories either on stage or on screen where we know what will happen. It's like going to a bullfight, ending with the death of the more disadvantaged creature or character on stage.

It's the story of a woman being murdered and I want an audience to ask themselves, why is it OK for us to go and watch and then applaud politely and go to the bar? The responsibility lies with all of us... as an audience, [and] with me as a director in the way I tell that story. If we're going to continue to perform operas, we have to be bold with them and look at them through different lenses. 

Sian: Leisel’s vision of this character is so multilayered, and she wanted the audience to go on a journey with Carmen from the beginning and learn to love her. We want the audience to participate in all the joy and love of life that she brings throughout the opera. We also want to see her vulnerabilities and the real tender moments that she has with José… because then it's even more devastating at the end when he just can't cope with being in her world and that he can't possess her and control her.

Liesel: And it is devastating, and that's exactly how it should feel. It’s bleak, the ending, of course, but the curtain call leaves hope. 

_{Photograph: Supplied/Opera Australia}

Opera is a form that relies on traditions and symbols, but often this leads to embedding harmful cultural stereotypes as well as gender stereotypes. Carmen also includes harmful stereotypes about Romani people, or Gypsy Romani Travellers. What is this production of Carmen doing to ensure that these stereotypes aren't perpetuated? 

Liesel: We just don't even address it. We don't set it in that world. Carmen is not an outsider because she's a “gypsy girl” and the smugglers aren't gypsies, because we set it in this rock’n’roll space. We've made it so that everyone is anti-establishment except for Zuniga, José and Morales. We haven’t set up this notion of the outside as being of another race or of another culture, we just set up an antipathy between the notion of establishment and everyone else.

Yes, but some of the exoticism in the music, the Spanish and exotic themes that are written by a French man might be hard to get away from? 

Liesel: Yes, there was all the orientalism of the 19th century, that fetishising of everything... I don't think [Carmen] is a story about Spain. We are not attending to that at all and there's no Spanish dancing. We absolutely referenced the metaphor of the bullfight all the way through, because that is a metaphor for the relationship between Carmen and Don José, and it is still appropriate and I want to give the audience a little something. But we’ve stepped right away from that false Spanish style, because as you say it was written in the 19th century by a Frenchman living in France who was enthralled, as all of Europe was, with this notion of orientalism, and that's been and gone.  

Sian: I think the music holds up even though there are those Spanish motifs running through. But I don't feel at all like I'm doing the same version of this music that I've ever done before. I've sung this many times, but this actually feels like I'm singing a role for the first time, because everything is stripped away and... it's just great music.

What's one thing that you would tell someone who's never been to an opera before about this production? 

Liesel: Even if you don't think you like classical music, I think you will have a really complete experience watching this opera. There’s laughs, there’s levity, there’s tragedy, there’s spectacle, you can have an argument about it; it’s a complete night at the theatre. 

Sian: When I watched one of the dress rehearsals of the other cast, I was just blown away. It was a revelation of what this opera can be. I had tears in my eyes of joy... because of the excitement and the thrill of the spectacle that I was watching in front of me.

Carmen on Cockatoo Island runs until December 18, 2022. Tickets range from $79 to $149. Book your tickets here. (Tip: Check the TodayTix app for rush tickets for as little as $45.) You can also book a 30-minute pre-show tour of Cockatoo Island here ($15 pp) and find out more about overnight accommodation packages, click here.