D amiano Michieletto’s Carmen has plenty going for it. The Italian director’s colourful 2024 staging, revived here for the second time already, is an effective update of a work where sexual violence can feel normalised if not handled with care. Here, it’s a subtle combination of emotional immaturity, relentless heat and habitual boredom that eventually blows the lid off the pressure cooker.

With the action relocated to Franco’s Spain, the oppressive police presence and reactive societal lawlessness ring true, even if Michieletto glosses over the era’s darker elements. In a remote rural community, Carmen and her smuggler associates may be merely kicking against the pricks, but their antiestablishment chutzpah wins hearts and minds from the get-go.…