Bursting with upfront energy, Acosta Danza’s contemporary mashup is lively but light on emotive moments

Bourne’s 1950s potboiler has been beefed up for a larger venue. The result is classy, trashy – and deeply serious

Opera North’s colourful production zeroes in on female agency with Chrystal E Williams as a magnetic Playboy-styled Carmen

A frenetic mix of gunrunners, drug gangs and slum workers assail feisty mezzo Virginie Verrez in Jo Davies’s interpretation of Bizet with added feminist verismo

This energetic, Cuban-ified version of Carmen Jones whizzes by, ricocheting from comedy to melodrama, intimacy to dancing crowds

Peter Brook’s take on Bizet squeezes all the famous tunes into an economic, stripped-down production for four, but demanded too much of these singers

With some superlative singing and an intelligent production, this Bizet opera should fly – but unfortunately the flaws in the work itself drag it back to earth

A small cast is uniformly strong vocally and works hard to bring off this much-cut Carmen, in which sense and continuity occasionally suffers

Matthew Bourne’s slick repair shop staging of Bizet’s Carmen is full of sexual charisma and violent passion

Mezzo soprano Justina Gringyte captures Carmen’s reckless vulnerability superbly, Richard Armstrong handles the score with real authority

Jean-Luc Tingaud reveals Bizet’s influences and development, in an elegant and important survey of the composer’s orchestral music