Carmen

Carmen, opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet—with a libretto in French by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy—that premiered on March 3, 1875. With a plot based on the 1845 novella of the same name by Prosper Mérimée, Bizet’s Carmen was groundbreaking in its realism, and it rapidly became one of the most popular Western operas of all time. It is the source of many memorable and widely recognized songs, notably those known by the popular names “Toréador Song” and “Habanera.” Carmen also is the best-known example of opéra-comique, a genre of French opera not necessarily comic but featuring both spoken dialogue and sung portions. Despite its current reputation, however, it was condemned by the earliest critics, who were unaccustomed to seeing the lives of the common folk, much less the world of gypsies (in Mérimée they are specifically identified with the Roma), smugglers, deserters, factory workers, and various ne’er-do-wells given centre stage.

World Premiere: 3 March 1875, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris

Background and context

Bizet was asked to write a new work for Paris Opéra-Comique, which for a century had specialized in presenting light moralistic pieces in which virtue is ultimately rewarded. No doubt Bizet was expected to write something in that vein. Instead, he chose to bring the underclass and unheroic to light. In doing so he blazed a new trail for the verismo composers, such as Giacomo Puccini, of the next generation.

Bizet had gone to some lengths to familiarize himself with the musical sounds and forms of the region in which Carmen is set, and several of the best-known portions use rhythms he learned from those studies. He was only 36 years old when Carmen premiered, and he was devastated by the initial rejection of his work as immoral and vulgar. According to the mores of the opera-going public, women neither smoked cigarettes in public nor engaged in physical fights, nor were they sexually free. Furthermore, opera was a refined art, not one to concern itself with lowlifes and scoundrels. Such was the immediate response to Carmen that, at the time of Bizet’s death from a heart condition exactly three months after the work’s premiere, he was convinced that he had written the greatest failure in the history of opera. He did not survive to witness the accuracy of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's prediction that “ten years hence Carmen will be the most popular opera in the world.”

Production Team

Cast