One hundred and thirty-six years ago, Carmen premiered in Paris. It was not well received. Composer Georges Bizet’s radically new realism scandalized critics by giving complex emotions to plebeians, women, and minorities. Wagnerians and anti-Wagnerians alike—that’s all there really were in 1875—criticized its musical composition, either for overemphasis or lack of emphasis on instrumentation. Today, Carmen is perhaps the best-loved French opera, and the third-most-produced opera in North America, according to New York–based nonprofit OPERA America.

Carmen is a gypsy charlatan in Seville who, after a catfight at the local cigarette factory, seduces a young soldier named Don José and persuades him to take her place in prison so she can escape. After his monthlong incarceration, Carmen convinces him to leave his fiancée, dying mother, and the army in order to join her band of thieves and smugglers. She repeatedly tells Don José that her love for him is temporary, and predicts that he will kill her in a fit of jealousy. Eventually she abandons him for the toreador Escamillo, and Don José fulfills her prediction by stabbing her in the heart.

As Carmen, mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili is hot in every relevant sense, just as Carmen should be. Her intentionality in movement and voice are overpoweringly sexy every minute she’s onstage. She’s performed at La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera, and is by far the most voluptuous member of this cast. During “Habanera,” Carmen’s iconic aria, Rachvelishvili straddles a chorus member on the floor and blasts her force-of-nature voice just two feet away from his face—lucky guy.

Her supporting cast is equally compelling. Michael Todd Simpson’s restrained swagger perfectly matches the sheer balls of the toreador Escamillo. But what elevates this performance is the purpose and cohesion of the chorus, which colors every scene. Watch for principal dancer Lisa Gillespie: She’s delightful dancing among the cigarette girls in the first act.

Norah Amsellem as Micaëla, Don José’s spurned fiancée, viscerally reminds the audience that opera is about powerful, unamplified live music. When she occasionally turns to the side during an otherwise reticent love duet, she creates an entirely new physical awareness of the space with the paths of her reverberating voice. You can literally feel her voice hit different parts of your ear—even quiet emotions are physically powerful when portrayed by a virtuosic singer.

At its core, opera is theater that uses music to suspend disbelief. This masterful production of a canonical opera forces us to acquiesce to its sense of tragedy and unease.