François Gremaud Carmen.

Carmen. is not Carmen : Carmen. is a piece which is acted and sung and which talks about Carmen, the most widely performed tragi-comic opera in the world. François Gremaud has re-written for Rosemary Standley and five musicians a tailor-made, reduced version of Bizet’s work. In a joyful way, the singer embodies that thing which provokes chaos and results in action: freedom.

Alone onstage, an orator recounts Carmen, the context of its creation, its fable and echoes with today’s world. A trained opera singer, Rosemary Standley, singer with the groups Moriarty and Birds on a Wire, is equally at home interpreting American folk as she is to maloya. She is this orator who, carried away by her passion, speaks before bursting into song and taking on several roles in order to retrace the heroine’s destiny. Following on from Phèdre! and Giselle… programmed at the Festival d’Automne, François Gremaud brings to a close his trilogy on the tragic female figures from the performing arts classics. In order to make the words ring out, he condenses the original libretto by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac whilst Luca Antignani, in order to make the music heard, has composed a synthesis for flute, harp, violin and saxophone, and adds on that eminently popular instrument, the accordion. If today, Carmen is a work which still provokes a reaction within us, and in different ways, Carmen. is an invitation to the life-force of joy.