A revival of the 2013 Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour production of Carmen opened last Friday. Two days earlier, the original director Gale Edwards, set designer Brian Thomson and costume designer Julie Lynch issued a statement criticising Opera Australia for refusing to invite them back to oversee the remount. “Therefore, we advise that we cannot guarantee the work’s integrity, or that the public will see the production as it was originally intended to be,” they said in the statement.

Opera Australia responded with a statement in which they said, that like many other major international opera companies they employ “a wealth of talented directors and craftspeople who painstakingly and lovingly present [revival] productions as true to their original format as possible.”

^{Carmen – Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour}

Re-staged by revival director Andy Morton, there were a few minor changes to the current production, until the final scene. In Edwards’ original version, Don José killed Carmen by slashing her throat. As he approached her body, Escamillo appeared on a lift at the back of the stage standing over a giant bull’s carcass, in a kind of mirror image. In the current revival,...