Carmen Suite is a one-act ballet created in 1967 by Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso to music by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin for his wife, prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya.

"[2] His intent was to give homage to what Bizet had done and acknowledge the universality of his music in telling the story of Carmen while adding his own ideas to the work.

In this way, Andrew Lindemann Malone writes in his description of the ballet, Shchedrin positioned him on a creative middle ground, "making himself if not an equal partner at least something above the level of arranger.

"[8] Toward this end, Shchedrin set Bizet's music with a number of clever and unexpected rhythmic twists and subtler changes in notes and chords.

Some melodies are "combined for 'found' counterpoint," Malone writes, others interrupted and still more left unaccompanied where Shchedrin assumes the listener knows both music and story all too well.

An instance of the last mentioned, Malone writes, is "when a big whipped-up climax in the Torero scene leads to nothing but the lowest percussion, pumping quietly, merrily, and obliviously along.

"[8] He also adds a number of humorous touches, such as the off-color use of the "Farandole" from Bizet's incidental music to L'Arlésienne and the sudden, unexpected hesitations in the Toreador Song.

[1] The Habanera, Malone says, is introduced "in a bouncy duet" for vibraphone and tympani, while various percussion instruments accentuate separate notes in the "Changing of the Guard" scene to "unexpectedly rattle" the melodic line.

"[8] The full extent of Shchedrin's emendations and their faithfulness to Bizet and the story, Malone writes, are both shown in the finale of the ballet: "melodies get twisted, thrown to exotic percussion, and otherwise trampled, but the resulting music, with its passionate climax and coda of distant bells and pizzicato strings, still has gravity and depth, due both to Bizet and to Shchedrin's interventions.

[6] Boris Messerer's sets included a mock bullring which symbolizes life, uniting the bullfight and Carmen's destiny in a sinister personage.

Soviet Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva, was repelled by the modernist flavor given to the music and the sexual overtones of both the story and the title character.

[9] When she met privately at the Bolshoi with Plisetskaya and other members, Furtseva called Carmen Suite "a great failure," the production "raw.

[14] Kudryavtsev, assured by the Ministry of Culture that Carmen Suite would be included, booked the Maple Leaf Gardens and began advertising Plisetskaya's appearance in it, expecting a full audience of 6,000.

The meeting lasted from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM and consisted mainly, as he recalled later to Canadian poet and diplomat Robert Ford, of "a running battle between Plisetskaya and Furtseva.

[17] At one point, Kudryavtsev remembered, Furtseva accused Shchedrin of plagiarism for claiming Carmen Suite "was his own work when 'everyone knew that it had been written by a French composer, Bizet.'"

When a tour of Great Britain was scheduled for later that year and the British impresario requested Carmen Suite, the Ministry of Culture agreed.

[19] In the April 1969 issue of Gramophone, reviewer Edward Greenfield called Carmen Suite "A real curiosity" and, while "a skilful hotchpotch on popular themes [that] has its attractions," it was "Not the sort of thing, then, that is going to endear itself to the US State Department"—a nod to the work's Soviet-Cuban roots and the Cold War climate prevailing at the time.

In his review of the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra recording, Sanderson calls the ballet "an iconoclastic but highly entertaining retelling of Bizet's opera,"[1] and John Armstrong, in his BBC Music review of the Mikhail Pletnev–Russian National Orchestra recording, writes that in Carmen Suite, "you get all the familiar tunes dressed up in a way Bizet would never have imagined, and with a sly grin and a twinkle in the eye.

In a New York Times 2011 review of the Mariinsky staging, Alastair Macaulay faults Alonso for turning "the dance impulse in Bizet’s music into something heavier and more clumsily expressionistic," then adds, Nothing about "Carmen Suite" is remotely subtle, though the narrative makes Carmen look considerably more dishonest about her change of erotic allegiance (from José to the Torero) than in the opera.