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Date:
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm
Duration:
2 Hours, 30 Minutes
Categories:
Address
Teatro Ocampo
Calle de Melchor Ocampo 256
Centro Histórico
58000 Morelia, Mich.
Tickets
$100 General admission
$50 Students/INSEN
Purchase tickets at the OSIDEM office in the lobby of Teatro Ocampo during normal business hours.
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

Photo of Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet

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.”

 

—Schwarm, B. and Cantoni, Linda. "Carmen." Encyclopedia Britannica, February 18, 2024.

Production Team

Conductor Allen Gómez
Stage Director Didier Otaola
Assistant Director Andrea Alonso
Assistant Conductor Daniel Marcos Rodríguez
Chorus Masters Cory Arteaga, Omar Nieto

 

Cast

Carmen Dawson Franzino
Don José Hector Valle
Michaëla Kristina Shafranski
Escamillo Carlos López
Frasquita Rebecca Korzelius
Mercédès Mary Wright
El Remendado Joseph Stroppel
El Dancaïro Andrés Sojo Montenegro
   
Coro Sopranos
  América Rayo Elizarrarás
  Brenda Vanessa Aguilar Reyes
  Camille Pacheco Flores
  Carolina Dávaos Bremauntz
  Chiara Obi Ramírez Grageda
  Kathy Martínez Rosas
  Kenia Skarlett Gutiérrez Martínez
  María De Los Ángeles Gómez Gómez
  María Guadalupe Soto Gámez
  Mariana Stephanie Cruz Zapata
   
  Contraltos
  Adriana Zúñiga Cruz
  Brenda Almonte Betancio
  Carmen Gómez García
  Galael Artemisa Torres Alcaraz
  Ixtlali Torres Guzmán
  Jessica Méndez Bautista
  Marina Águila Hernández
  María Fernanda Favela Santacruz
  Naizeth Lira Córdoba
  Naomi Sophia Rubio García
  Stephanie Rueda Tello
   
  Tenors
  Anthony Joseph Vizzone López
  Daniel Aarón Mendoza Torres
  Francisco Giovanni Romero Torres
  Iván Espinoza Martínez
  Romel Rafael Ledesma Piñón
   
  Basses
  Daniel Castañeda Zapata
  Germán Rodrigo Martínez Ramos
  Jordan Isaí Castillo Baltazar
  Manuel Miranda Ibarra
  Sebastián Márquez Loaiza