After reading the reviews here I went to the bill last night with very low expectations of Carmen, though I tried to keep an open mind; and I found that although in places the expectations were unfortunately matched, I found the work as a whole quite a lot better than anticipated. Colourful, fun and at the end even moving, though also sometimes both boring and baffling. Frankly I had no idea what was happening or why much of the time (didn't buy a programme and the plot summary on the Opera House's website was short to the point of being useless, as it turned out), but the central relationships were at least clear and Laura Morera was really wonderful. It has a different tone and taste to the rest of the Royal Ballet's repertoire, but I found that quite refreshing. I thought that some of the crowd scenes were tedious and some of the choreography derivative, and I agree that it would benefit from editing/cutting, but those criticisms can (unfortunately) be made of many new works. I loved the sets and even the sooty bull! And I thought the work had a certain charm about it. The only other version of Carmen that I've seen is Mats Ek's, a long time ago, and I loathed that; so for me this was a big step up. Acosta himself has such presence that he holds the piece together whenever he's on stage; without him I suspect the faults would be even more of a problem.
I thought the rest of the bill was excellent. My only reservation about Viscera was the lighting which was annoyingly low a lot of the time, for no apparent reason; I loved the choreography, music and costumes. And Muntagirov was sensational in the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.
So all in all a very good evening.