About

In partnership with music ensemble CarmenCo, theatre and music company The Telling presents a fun-filled music and theatre show, Creating Carmen, by award-winning playwright Clare Norburn and BAFTA-nominated director Nicholas Renton (Mrs Gaskells’ Wives & Daughters, Lewis, Musketeers) which will tour the UK, stopping at Silsden Town Hall on Saturday 1 st March, as well as Cardiff, Bedford, Lancaster and Wolverhampton. This tour follows a successful 5-date run at OSO Arts Centre, Barnes.

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?