Carmen

What happens when Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen – a feast of jealous passion and fatal love – collides with the flamenco visionary from Seville, Israel Galván? The result is a journey to the very heart of Carmen. Familiar opera arias burn brightly, yet the result is a classic pulsating in a totally new form, in which the love story is told by three opera singers, a cantaora and a flamenco dancer. At its side stands a full symphony orchestra, as Carmen demands – and, in an audacious twist, the acclaimed Oulu-based male choir Huutajat!

Where Bizet’s Carmen is a romantic opera of doomed destiny and jealous obsession, Galván’s Carmen becomes a contemporary ritual. The tale is dismantled, inverted and rebuilt through dance, cry and a multi-layered soundscape. Having reinterpreted classics such as Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Galván approaches these masterpieces in his own style: intimate, provocative, veiled by humour, but never diminished. “Everything is veiled in musical exaggeration and fantasy. The performance ends in love – not the knife,” he sums up.

Oulu is the European Capital of Culture in 2026. Carmen is part of the Oulu2026 cultural programme and the cultural climate change initiative.

Original production
IGalván Company, Teatro de la Maestranza & XXIII Bienal de Flamenco de Sevilla

Co-production
Les Nuits de Fourvière – Festival International de la Métropole de Lyon

La Villette – Paris / Philharmonie de Paris / Le Théatre de la Ville

In collaboration with
INAEM – National Institute of Performing Arts and Music

Production in Oulu
Oulu Sinfonia & Mieskuoro Huutajat

***

Duration about 1 h 40 min (no intermission)

Tickets 58 € normal / 48 € pensioner / 38 € student, unemployed, child (3–17 yrs)

Free entry to the concert for Kaikukortti holders (limited amount, must be purchased in advance from Oulu10 service point).

Prices include service fee. Order fee 3 €/order when bought from Ticketmaster shops or 2 €/order when bought from Ticketmaster online shop will be added, excluding tickets purchased at Oulu Sinfonia ticket booth and Kaikukortti-tickets.