Scottish Opera’s new Carmen begins at the end. ‘Take me away: I have killed her,’ intones a voiceover and as the prelude swaggers out, José is in a police interrogation cell, where an investigator is attempting to piece together his story. In other words, it’s CSI: Seville. In converting Meilhac and Halévy’s libretto into a police procedural, director John Fulljames has created a Carmen that’s ideally gauged to a TV-literate audience: told in flashback, with any confusion swiftly cleared up by spoken dialogue that never feels clunky because interrogation is central to the genre.
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