Bizet’s Carmen with its gypsy rhythms and smouldering passions has proved an adaptable gift to producers and directors across a whole range of artforms, traversing the globe from Broadway to Cape Town. Sydney, then, should prove a small hurdle, and in many ways Gale Edwards’ handsome production manages to project the essentials across the 100 metres or so required to enter the eyes and ears of a sizable audience. In other ways though, this intimate tale of two people drawn together by an intense sexual bond, struggles to take hold of hearts and minds.

Maybe the problem lies with the opera itself, written for the modest environs of the Opéra-Comique in Paris. With the exception of the glittering arrival of the toreadors for the final bullfight, every scene either takes place at night or in a confined space – certainly nothing bigger than a town square. Carmen’s inherent naturalism also requires a subtlety of gesture, mood and emotion. It’s a huge challenge to make a show, where intensity of feeling is written on every face, pay off on a stage the size of a football field and where at least 60% of your audience are, by necessity, a long way...