The Metropolitan Opera’s rendition of Carmen reportedly features ICE agents harassing an OnlyFans prostitute on a set resembling the U.S.-Mexico Border.
Liel Leibovitz, editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine, reported of seeing the modern update to Carmen in an X post this week.
“For the first time ever, I’m leaving an opera halfway through. The Met’s Carmen is about a wicked ICE agent abusing a tatted-up OnlyFans girl on a grey and dirty stage supposed to resemble the US southern border. Another piece of truth and beauty destroyed by the Commies,” Leibovitz said.
The Met’s website says of the new production, starring Isabel Leonard (pictured under headline) and premiering last October: “[T]he action moves to the modern day, set amid a band of human traffickers—shining new light on the opera’s evergreen themes.”
Some social media users agreed that the modern update went too far while others felt it fit the themes of Carmen, noting that retellings of Western classics often toss in a modern flare to spice the drama.
This is not the first time a modern update to Carmen sparked controversy. In 2018, during the height of #MeToo, a production held in Florence, Italy, even went as far to alter the ending as a social statement.
“Carmen, the opera heroine, gets to live instead of being slain — thanks to a bold twist to the finale of the Georges Bizet work by some who believe it’s time to say enough to violence against women,” noted the Associated Press at the time.
“In the classic opera, first performed in Paris in 1875, the feisty gypsy Carmen is murdered by Don Jose in a fit of jealousy. But those in the cast thought the time was ripe for a new finale given Italy’s recent, burgeoning movement to combat male violence against female partners or relatives. And so this production’s ending has the heroine shooting to death Don Jose,” it added.
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