ULUSH55

One of the world’s best-loved operas has been given a radically different ending in Italy, with the heroine killing her tormentor rather than being killed herself, in a stand against violence to women.

In Bizet’s original story, Don José is a naïve soldier who is lured away from his military duties and his childhood sweetheart by Carmen. But she then falls for the handsome bull-fighter Escamillo, driving Don Jose wild with jealousy. The last act of the opera is set outside the bullring in Seville, where Carmen is stabbed to death by Don José.

In what is believed to be a world first, a production of Bizet’s Carmen will see Carmen shoot her thwarted admirer Don José with a pistol that she grabs off him, rather than being stabbed to death by him.

The dramatic departure from operatic orthodoxy is an attempt to shine the spotlight on the modern-day abuse and mistreatment of women, an issue given added resonance by the outrage over the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump.

The new version of Carmen will open at Florence’s opera house this weekend, with the first few nights already sold out.

“As far as we know it is the first time that the ending to Carmen has been changed,” the opera house’s Paolo Klun told The Telegraph.

The producers said they had changed the denouement of the story in part to protest at the large number of Italian women who are killed each year by jealous husbands, boyfriends and lovers.

Sociologists and campaigners say it is driven by men feeling threatened by the greater freedoms and enhanced economic independence that many Italian women now enjoy after decades of being seen as pliable possessions.

With horrific cases of domestic violence coming to light almost every month, the directors of the work said they were uncomfortable with the idea of audiences applauding the final scene, in which Carmen is stabbed to death and lies motionless on the stage.