Creating Carmen: Opera’s most famous femme fatale unmasked at Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton

The show takes place in 1845 as 19th-century French writer Prosper Merimée struggles with his latest novella, Carmen, which, 30 years later, became the inspiration for Georges Bizet’s famous opera of the same name. 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the first performance of the opera which brought us arguably opera’s most famous, compelling and feisty heroine. In Clare Norburn’s play with music, Merimée’s central character, Carmen, turns up in his study, larger than life, with a band of musicians in tow and chaos in her wake! Which one of them controls the narrative? And what will happen when Carmen discovers the nasty ending Mérimée has planned for her?

​The show promises to be a fun-filled performance of fantasy, comedy, drama and tremendous music from Bizet’s Carmen and Spanish-inspired music by Boccherini, Manuel de Falla, García Lorca, Granados, Ravel and Albeniz, all arranged and performed by the prizewinning musical trio, CarmenCo: Emily Andrews (flute/mezzo), David Massey and Francisco Correa (classical guitars).

“mesmerising... An austerely beautiful piece about a woman whose faith gave her extraordinary strength and courage." - Tim Ashley, The Guardian on The Telling’s show, ‘Vision’

Starring as Prosper Merimée is the extraordinary and versatile actor, comedian and improvisor, Niall Ashdown, who was in the original British version of Whose Line is it Anyway? and has performed regularly with theatre companies such as Improbable, Kneehigh, Told By An Idiot and at the Globe Theatre. He’s also a regular comedy improvisor onstage with the Comedy Store Players, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Impropera and with Ross Noble.

Niall is joined by Suzanne Ahmet as Carmen who has recently appeared in Channel 4’s Generation Z alongside Johnny Vegas and the BBC’s Ludwig with Anna Maxwell Martin. She has also recently performed on stages such as at The New Vic Theatre, @sohoplace and The Kings Head Theatre.

The playwright, Clare Norburn, won the Colin Skipp Memorial Cup at the Arts Richmond Radio Playwriting Competition in 2023 for her radio play ‘The End. Roll Credits’, about TV playwright Dennis Potter’s famous TV interview with Melvyn Bragg. Since 2010, Norburn has been developing a new genre of ‘concertplays’ which seamlessly combine music and theatre.

“an exploration of the boundaries between art and life...intelligent… finds new terrain” - Arifa Akbar, The Guardian on Clare Norburn’s writing

Norburn writes about the show: “Writers often talk about their characters ‘hijacking the narrative’ and I have that kind of real, as far as anything on the stage can be said to be real, in writing Creating Carmen.”

Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870) was a real iconoclast. The play opens with him in a midlife crisis, struggling with a new genre, writing what would become his best-known work - the novella, Carmen. Norburn adds: “Mérimée’s struggle resonated with my own work on the alchemical collision between music and theatre. As I researched him, what astonished me was how extraordinarily modern he was. He was a revolutionary - the Brecht of his day. Not only did he invent the novella but in his theatrical works, he deliberately played with, and overturned, conventions. There are echoes of Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo, where a celluloid character steps out of the screen and into the auditorium. Mérimée likewise takes delight in deconstructing the artifice in front of our very eyes. In his The Theatre of Clara Gazul, written when he was only 23, a dead character springs to life to say: ‘it’s just a play: I’m not really dead’. In his novella of Carmen, Mérimée places himself as narrator directly in narrative; he creates a scenario where he actually meets the hero Don José and is almost seduced by Carmen.”

“I took his documented neuroticism and created a ‘midlife crisis’ for him. Into Mérimée’s personal love life crisis steps a living, breathing Carmen who disrupts his world, challenging his decisions about her character. It’s a comedy inspired by a sense of ridiculousness which Mérimée himself delighted in. But it has serious undertones about creativity and crisis and how far a writer ever really controls their own narrative.”

Creating Carmen also explores the relationship between writer/character, creator/teacher in a way that has been perfected in Educating Rita and Pygmalion: the instinctual, uneducated woman challenging ‘the expert man’, prodding holes in his carefully constructed universe.

“It also was a chance to shine a light on the extraordinary character of Carmen,” adds Norburn. “She is a fiercely independent woman who is outside her own time. No wonder, in 19th-century terms, death could be the only possible conclusion for her… The world was not yet ready.”

The collision of music and theatre is Clare Norburn and her company The Telling’s hallmark. The drama is soundtracked by live music performed by CarmenCo, the multi-prizewinning trio who perform their own arrangements of orchestral pieces, opera, folk and world music for guitars, flute and voice.

“CarmenCo are a celestial conception” - Richard Amey, Brighton and Hove Independent

The Telling and CarmenCo will take Creating Carmen across England and Wales on a 5-date tour alongside a week run at OSO Arts Centre in Barnes, SW London. Full details are on The Telling’s website: thetelling.co.uk/diary