Carmen's Premiere at the National Center for the Performing Arts

The National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) was surely built with shows like Carmen in mind: productions that are big and colorful, timeless yet contemporary, instantly recognizable and all-around dazzling. This Thursday, NCPA will stage Georges Bizet's operatic masterpiece on its main stage, with American director Francesca Zambello helming an oversized production involving two separate lead casts (one Chinese and one Western), a Chinese chorus of 100-plus singers and all the dramatic richness of this classic story of love and lust.

Originally a novella by French author Prosper Mérimée, Carmen was adapted by Mérimée's countryman, Bizet, into an opera that premiered at Paris's Opéra-Comique in 1875. Its opening night was not auspicious, nor should it have been: at the height of Victorian priggishness, here was a show that flaunted defiance and passion, that used exotic settings and flamboyant characters, that had as a centerpiece -- indeed, the title character -- a woman who rolled cigars against her bare legs and seduced men of honor... to say nothing of arias that were bold, fast and unconventional, with tunes that have since entered popular culture.

Critics, of course, panned Carmen with great grandeur. A few short years later -- after a successful premiere in Vienna and influenced by the tragic death of Bizet -- those same critics would be lavishing praise, and Carmen would be well on its way to becoming one of the most popular operas of all time. (Along with Aida and La Bohème, Carmen is part of the "ABC of opera.")

NCPA will put on six "classical productions as true as possible to the original story," according to Zambello, over five consecutive evenings. Zambello, who is directing Carmen for the fifth time, recently sat with us to discuss the upcoming event.

Your production team has people from Britain, Belgium, France, U.S. and China -- has it been challenging for you to integrate everyone?

No, the thing about opera is, it is an international art form, so what's exciting is that we, as many cultures and countries, can work together. We communicate much better than politicians. And for me it's been exciting to understand Chinese culture and personalities in a very different way to what I knew before, which was a lot of (American-born Chinese). It's very different.

What is notable about Carmen, the character?

She tells us that for her, liberty is the most important thing. Free she was born and free she will die. And any character, male or female, who lives like that is very unique -- someone who cares about nothing but their own freedom, their own sense that they have no shackles, no responsibilities.

To create a character like that, who's the opposite of Don José -- who believes in the world of duty and responsibility and the church and his girlfriend Micaela and his mother -- makes her unique even today. That's why people want to see Carmen. I think people either want to be Carmen or they know a Carmen. She's not about sex; that's a sidebar.

These issues of freedom and duty must resonate a little bit more with a Chinese audience.

I talked a lot with the chorus about José and his duty and his responsibility to his mother. You know, in the West we don't respect elders the way that you do here, and it was interesting that one of the choristers said to me, "He has to go back to his mother. He must do that." Whereas of course in the West you think, Well, I dunno, why does he have to?

Do you see glimmers of cultural differences in the way that Kristin Chavez ("Chavez doesn't just play Carmen -- she is Carmen," wrote the Winnipeg Free Press) and Liang Ning approach the role?

Liang has lived in the West a long time, so I think some of that has gone away, but we've had a lot of very interesting discussions about it, about women's place in China; I've learned a lot. [Carmen] is a pearl in the middle of the discussion.

I think that both of the women have similar approaches, they've both played the role, they both have had a time in their lives to think about her. But what's interesting, too, for performers is when you do a role when you're 20 and then when you're 30, you're 35, your feelings change about it. They become much deeper and more profound.

Carmen is basically a woman who is afraid, in some ways, of everything, of letting emotion take over, and that's something that's interesting to explore with performers because it's their job to be as emotional as possible.

Said tenor Richard Troxell, who plays Don José: "They kiss differently."

It'll be interesting to see what kind of crowd the foreign cast draws versus the Chinese cast.

I just hope it draws a big crowd.

What are your hopes as far as audience response?

I really hope the audience responds to opera as an art form and that it gets new audiences and new people in. I do think this is one of the best opportunities to discover opera. This is an opera that has something for everybody. I mean, forget anything psychological or deep -- just from a show point of view, this is a great show. It's got showmanship and performances and color and locations and choreography and dancing and fabulous costumes and great visuals. Plus songs that they know. It doesn't matter if you've been living in a jungle, you are still going to know.

Thoughts about opera in China?

The fact that you built so many theaters is a miracle. It's a miracle. You've built more theaters than any other country in the world in the last decade. Every city has a theater here. And it's big. And an architect designed it. It's not some ugly Soviet cement block building, it's something that has some thought. To me, that's phenomenal. I'm jealous.

To me, opera is very much an art form for all people. I don't think it's an elitist thing, I don't think it's a thing for just people with money. I think that we have to do it in a way that we attract the most audiences. For example, there are 35 children in [our production]. That's probably their first exposure to opera. Isn't that great? Some of the kids are five years old. That's fantastic. It's those 35 kids, their 35 parents, their 35 grandparents -- it's like putting a pebble in a pond and making it bigger and bigger. And that's how you do it, hopefully by all different avenues. And so all I can say is I hope to make opera more accessible in China. That's really my goal.

Tickets to NCPA's Carmen, which runs from May 13-17, can be purchased at Piao.com.cn, RMB 180-880.