Bárbara Lluch's new production of "Carmen," titled "Carmen: The Reel Story," became the first opera of the brand-new Escena Escorial Festival in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, whose artistic director and creator is conductor Alondra de la Parra. The production had its world premiere at the PAAX GNP Festival in Mexico before making its Spanish debut at the inaugural festival.

The staging opens with femicide statistics flashing across a screen under the sound of Bizet's overture. Numbers from different countries, mixed with quotes from well-known male politicians on women's place in society, appear before a single note of music has been sung. The review in OperaWire calls it "an immediate, disorienting, and entirely deliberate rupture with everything audiences expect when they take their seats for this opera."

"Carmen" is the most performed opera in the world by number of productions, and its heroine dies in every generation for the same reason: for the right to rule her own life. The reviewer notes how few productions have been, and still are, staged through the male gaze — and that "not a single male director has stopped to ask why."

The production situates the story in the social reality audiences currently inhabit: screens and chats running alongside live conversation, dating apps, girlfriends' clubs. Both a dramatic and a musical theater operate on the stage at once, reinforcing each other. The singers' acting rests, in the reviewer's assessment, on "the best traditions of British theatre training," combining deep classical text, powerful vocal grounding, and mandatory physical expressiveness. The minimalist stage design holds the viewer's attention and serves the director's intent.

The scenes with children carry particular weight. Mass "programming" through TikTok and cartoons with political subtext is woven into the production, as is gender-divided upbringing: boys bulk up, watch football and compete through sports and gadgets, while girls improve themselves "supposedly of their own free will." Meanwhile the crowd's idol throws roses to both sides, and male and female crowds grab them with the same fanaticism.

The characters are rethought through contemporary psychology rather than the open passions of the 19th century. Don José is not a macho man but a security guard at an office building — someone who looks nice on the surface yet is "pathetic and not particularly interesting." Escamillo is a football star instead of a bullfighter. Wounded by Carmen's attention to Escamillo, Don José joins chats where men discuss their girlfriends and other women, a direct reference to the Gisèle Pelicot case. The temperature of that discussion gradually gives him "permission to kill." Carmen does not fall in love with him; she settles for the relationship, and when she discovers the chat, she leaves Escamillo for good.

Artificial intelligence is deployed simply and effectively. Where recent festival productions made AI look "silly, soulless, and out of place," here the visual effects are witty and, next to live people, even frightening. The compressed format delivers the story in an hour and a half instead of Bizet's three hours.

Mezzo-soprano Gaëlle Arquez dominated the stage as Carmen — "with voice, with dance, and physicality." The reviewer praises "one of the most beautiful voices of her generation: flexible, elegant, silky, and, at the same time, fresh and seductive," with "incredible shades of piano and phrasing" and "not a single questionable note."

Mexican American tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz gave "a genuinely wonderful vocal performance" as Don José, with a velvety lyric timbre suiting a character who is more romantic than hero. Italian bass-baritone Gianluca Margheri brought rich, dark colors to Escamillo, thickening his vocal palette with drama and authority while cutting effortlessly through the dense orchestral texture to the farthest rows of the Auditorio El Escorial.

At the podium, Alondra de la Parra drew an expressive, finely balanced sound from the ORCAM orchestra, with rhythmic precision and new details in music everyone has heard countless times. The reviewer credits her as part of a new wave of conductors who break the "maestro dictator" stereotype and build a living dialogue with orchestra and audience alike, offering thoughtful introductions before performances.

De la Parra stated her ambition plainly at the presentation: she wants to turn San Lorenzo de El Escorial into a world-class summer cultural capital, something like a Spanish Salzburg. More than 250 artists from 11 countries have already taken the festival stage in 2026, among them Daniel Barenboim, alongside leading local ensembles. The program opened on Aug. 29 with a concert by French pianist Thomas Enhco.

Given the ambition, the lineup, and the resounding success of "Carmen: The Reel Story" in this first season, Escena Escorial looks like a bid for a new permanent fixture on Spain's and Europe's cultural map.