LETTER FROM VIENNA

Right from the start of the performance, the tone was set. "As smoking is forbidden on stage, the staging had to be adapted. But fortunately, the representation of a femicide is still allowed," warned the ironic voice of Dutch opera director Lotte de Beer, before the curtain rose on Carmen on Thursday, October 3, at the Vienna Volksoper. The audience in the Austrian capital gave a forced laugh.

In the opening scene of this version of Georges Bizet's (1838-1875) famous opera, French mezzo-soprano Katia Ledoux, who plays the title role, refuses to conform to her assembly-line job at the Seville tobacco factory. She constantly escapes from the frame, until the apotheosis of the famous final scene where she is murdered by Don José, her jilted lover. In this version, the chorus is grouped in false boxes reconstructed on stage and rejoices at Carmen's death, reflecting back to the real audience their supposed eagerness for the death of this free woman.

"The idea is to show this fascination of the opera world with seeing women die. It's silly how much femicides are totally normalized in opera," Ledoux explained, speaking to Le Monde a few days after the premiere. The performance was met with mixed reviews in the Austrian press; in essence, it criticized de Beer's staging for being too "woke." "I see a lot of myself in this dangerous audience," the singer warned, however, expressing surprise that some might have taken this metatheater as "an insult, when it's just bizarre, this fascination with dying opera heroines."

At the age of 34, Ledoux has become a Viennese sensation, as much for her widely recognized talent as for her feminist commitments which break with a local opera scene that is still fairly conservative. "Viennese audiences are extremely passionate and take the time to write us letters. I think it's only here that it happens like this," said this woman with her imposing presence and deeply communicative laugh.

After joining the cast of the Vienna Volksoper in 2022, she first came to prominence in February 2023 when in addition to her role as Venus, she agreed at the last minute to sing the role of Orpheus in Jacques Offenbach's (1819-1880) opera Orphée aux Enfers, replacing a colleague who had fallen ill. A rare performance. For her first prima donna role, she plays Carmen in a large black costume, a deliberate departure from the seductive outfits Bizet's heroine is often decked out in.

"There are a lot of critics who don't think I'm sexy at all because I'm fat and I don't have my boobs hanging out. It's true that I don't show much of my body in this Carmen, but does that mean it's not sexy?" wondered the woman who describes herself on Instagram as "anxious, awkward, fat, Black, polyamorous, queer, feminist, sweet." This willingness to challenge the codes of opera most likely stems from her atypical background.

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