Carmen at the Komische Oper Berlin is a sexy, sensual affair

For the last night of my stay in Berlin, I went to see Carmen at the Komische Oper Berlin. This was the first time I bought a cheap ticket (€12) to the opera in Europe, and the first time I had to deal with some of the quirks—as it turned out, my seat was so far out in the wings that the view was nonexistent when I was sitting, and so I spent just about the entire three hours standing.

My view of the stage—more of a sliver than a proper view. As it turned out, a substantial part of the action occurred at stage right, so I had to lean precariously over just to get a glimpse.

But what action there was! As purist as I am, I occasionally find these "updated" productions just as entertaining and enjoyable. As befits the Komishe Oper, the production was sung in German, except for two of Carmen's arias: the Habanera ("L'amour est un oiseaux rebelle") and the first number of the second act ("Les tringes des sistres tintaient"), which were sung in French (although the interjections by the choir were in German), and some of the video segments with José, which were in English—more on those later. In this production, Carmen was every bit the femme fatale, all the way down to her costumes, which always emphasized her wonderful figure. Heaven forbid if one day I have to see a Wagnerian soprano—the proverbial "fat lady"—sing this role! In addition, the character playing Manuela (who supplants Lillas Pastia as the innkeeper in this production) also dances extremely lively flamencos in between the acts, to a live guitar accompaniment on-stage, which adds to the highly sensual element. 

Tonight's cast list

The entire opera was cast as sort of a flashback from the perspective of José, who is being interrogated after he has killed Carmen. The interrogation is presented in video segments in between Acts I and II, and Acts III and IV (the intermission was between Acts II and III), and has the tenor playing José speaking in his mother tongue. Regarding the choice of language, an interesting decision was to keep Carmen's aforementioned arias in the original French—the only reason I can think of is that these arias deal with Carmen's highly capricious love ("Si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime"), and of course, French is the language of love!