Mauricio Villa

It is an impressive and meaningful production which showcases all the technical possibilities of the Bastille stage and features some nuanced stagecraft that includes breaking the fourth wall and integraing the audience into the action of the opera.

Once again, it is hard to determine if the inaudible nature of the performance was the result of poor casting or the theater’s own imbalances. Nonetheless, it was an uncomfortable experience watching an opera under those conditions.

It is a fascinating and imaginative production, though one might understand the negative reaction of an audience who might expect something more tradition and might be shocked by the explicit sexual references during Flora’s party.

Javier Camarena is the reigning “King of Bel Canto,” as he proved once more during his second performance of “I Puritani” at Théâtre de la Bastille. I have seen Camarena in three different productions of “I Puritani,” including the Teatro Real in 2016, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in 2018, and this production in Paris, and have witnessed how he has grown in the part.

But Bieito also produces lyrical moments too, like the naked torero practicing under the moonlight during the Act four prelude. Ultimately, it is a powerful production that focuses on the crude reality rather than the romantic view of Carmen’s myth.