Uyen Ly – Interview with Helena Rohr about Opera Carmen

It is not about traditional Carmen!

The world famous opera Carmen will be different when it comes to Hanoi. Helena Rohr, the director of the opera said that it would be about modern Hanoi women.

Helena Rohr, the Swedish director of Carmen, insisted that she doesn’t want to tell a traditional story of Carmen. Stories of women in Hanoi inspired her to build a new beautiful Carmen who is not there for men to claim.

Uyen Ly from Hanoi Grapevine interviewed Helena Rohr before the show started.

Why did you choose Carmen?

I want to tell a story about women in Vietnam. That (Carmen) is my entrance to the story here. Because I learnt from my friends here now, that there are so many women who are so strong. And they need to be strong to be able to live their life. And of course in Sweden also, we need to be strong, but in another way. I am very much aware, and I think it is very important with gender issues and equality. When I was here two years ago, I started to understand about domestic violence. In Vietnam, it is more common within the culture in a way that it is not in my home. It exists, unfortunately, all over the world. But when I heard about the situation here, I got interested.

And I found CSAGA (Center for Studies and Applied Sciences in Gender – Family – Women and Adolescents; a Vietnamese non-profit, non-governmental organization working in implementation of the rights of women and children who are affected by violence and discrimination) So I contacted them and said I would like to do something with them. And they were like “Yes”. So now I have a project with them. I work with women who have survived from domestic violence. So that inspired me. I thought about Carmen, and why does she need to be strong?  It’s because the men around her are violent. That is kind of adaptable to many places but I could see that from the things I heard and from my friends here, and from my sense about strong women in Vietnam. The surrounding doesn’t help them to be as strong as they could be. Do you know what I mean? It’s from the stories from CSAGA that I heard and I wanted to tell. And also from my friends they told me their own life stories, and that really moved me. So I felt that I have to tell Carmen here, just to do that.

Can you tell some of the stories you heard from your friends or from CSAGA?

I have a friend who had a man who beat her severely, and she kept staying with him because she has his child. And when she divorced, you know, she needed the divorce otherwise she wouldn’t survive, she was all alone. She couldn’t take her son with her because she was living in her husband’s family house. She had no furniture, she had nothing. You know I am Swedish. In Sweden we have a law that when you divorce or separate, you split 50/50. So I became so interested. I wondered why? Why? I wanted to investigate. I don’t want to tell some kind of truth like “You should do this”. No, It’s not. I just want to tell stories. And that man he threatened her after the divorce. He threw acid to her face. And she is just one of my friends. I have other friends who said: “Yeah yeah, he beat me, but then he was fine again”. So for me, I just wonder why you, a marvelous woman, stay with the man who beat you. I don’t understand.

What will make the distinction of the modern Vietnamese Carmen?

This Carmen is set in contemporary Hanoi. It’s not in Spain. Not at all. No Spanish dance, nothing like that. It’s modern. It’s now. Escamillo, originally he is a toreador, and it is almost no more. They still do it Spain, but it’s really too much pain for the animal, so they are discussing about it. But instead of being a toreador, he is a Thai boxer from Thailand, a really famous Thai boxer.

And of course Carmen is about love, about being true to your heart. I think even though there is violence in the story, there is love, but the violence, or whatever it is, is unbalanced. Maybe it’s the structure around us that makes a man, feel so much feeling. They don’t have the tools to handle the emotions, to express them, so that’s why they… (Helena made an aggressive slap in the air). And even though, you feel you love someone very deeply, that structure stands in the way of love.

This Carmen she has a child. She is divorced. Here we started to see her history, that she was beaten by a man and she left him because of that. She brings her daughter, and because of the daughter, she needs to work at the factory. And then her adventure starts with love. So it is not a traditional Carmen.

The conventional Carmen, she has….you know, and…(Helena moved her body sexily), and I think that is a man’s view of the woman, because there was a man who wrote it, it was a man who directed it a hundred years ago. And now women can direct it, can tell it from the women’s point of view.

What is Carmen’s story? She doesn’t have to be this…(Helena moved her body sexily again) sexy. It’s the men who want her to be sexy. We, as the women, we have the right to feel beautiful, happy, sexy without any man having to claim us. The original Carmen, she is there for men to watch, to have. She’s there for them.

I don’t want to tell that story. I want to tell the story of a woman who has her own will and is strong and brave in order to survive. Unfortunately she doesn’t survive (Carmen was killed by her lover), but we know she does. So let’s talk about this. Why? Why? Why? Why is it like this? How can we be strong women and not be punished for this? For me, as a person, I want every one to fulfill their dream. So we can make a better world in the end. And it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman.

Thank you very much