Carmen

Georges Bizet (1838-1875) has been celebrated for his masterpiece Carmen, a veritable French opera par excellence and one of the most performed around the world. Tragically, the composer never experienced the success of his work during his lifetime, having died only three months after its premiere in Opéra-Comique in Paris. The libretto is an adaptation by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy of Mérimée’s eponymous novel. At first, the public and critics booed and dismissed the opera's content, hypocritically considered immoral by the 19th century bourgeois society, only to be initially recognized for its compositional craft by the likes of Massenet and Tchaikovsky. Even the cynical philosopher Nietzsche revered Carmen, calling it the “perfect antidote to the Wagnerian nevrose.” But to this day, Carmen has been represented 35 times at the Opéra-Comique, and it seems there’s no end in sight for its success! If Carmen’s popularity has grown over time, its anchoring in the operatic canon is nowadays definitive. Bizet and his librettists adapted the play with sensibility and cleverness, rich in a variety of memorable melodies that give shape to a fictive yet irresistible Spain. Bizet found a prime opportunity in Merimée’s Carmen to put into music a story about extreme passions: vengeance, sex, rivalry, betrayal, and even murder! Perhaps Tchaikovsky had the final say, whose praise largely helped to revive the rejected jewel: “Carmen is a masterpiece in every sense of the word.”