Palau de les Arts: Carmen

About the Event

Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía sets the stage for an unforgettable evening with Carmen, Georges Bizet’s passionate opera of desire, freedom, and fate.

Carmen, in the Nakes Arena of Her Soul

A literary myth drawn from Prosper Mérimée’s novel, transcending picturesque exoticism to explore the conflict between social order and individual freedom. Its protagonists become, unknowingly and unwillingly, figures of absolute, tragic free will, choosing death over submission. Faithful to Mérimée, this Carmen embodies a tormented Spain that abandons geography to become a psychological state of constant tension, severity, and destiny a sharply modern vision where tragedy unfolds with devastating, contemporary clarity, in seemingly perpetual psychological transformation.

The career of Ted Huffman, the stage director who challenges opera’s conventions, continues its unstoppable ascent following his appointment as General Director of the Aix‐en‐Provence Festival. The New York‐born director brings Les Arts a visionary Carmen, distant from cliché and intensely theatrical. Performers gradually shape their identities on a living stage, as sets and costumes change in full view, turning the audience into participants in an immersive experience. Vasilisa Berzhanskaya makes her Valencia debut after acclaim in Vienna and Covent Garden as today’s finest Carmen. Alongside her are tenor Charles Castronovo’s magnificent Don José, acclaimed Ruth Iniesta as Micaëla, and innovative Escamillo Davide Luciano, who makes his Salzburg Festival debut in 2026 — all guided by Michele Spotti’s assured baton.