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Georges Bizet
- Carmen (French: [kaʁmɛn] ⓘ) is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée.
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Carmen (French: ⓘ) is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée.
- Overview
- Background and context
- Cast and vocal parts
- Setting and story summary
- Act I
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 ti...
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 “[t]en years hence Carmen will be the most popular opera in the world.”
•Carmen, a gypsy (mezzo-soprano)
•Don José, a corporal of dragoons (tenor)
•Escamillo, a matador (baritone)
•Le Dancaïre, smuggler (baritone)
•Le Remendado, smuggler (tenor)
•Zuniga, a captain (bass)
Carmen is set in and around Sevilla, Spain, about 1820.
A square in Sevilla, outside a cigarette factory.
Corporal Moralès and a group of soldiers idly watch people come and go in the square. Micaëla, a young woman from the country, attracts their interest. She is looking for a brigadier named Don José. Invited to wait for him in the guardhouse, she demurs and says she will return later. Moralès and soldiers resign themselves to watching the passersby again.
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The changing of the guard is heralded by a group of street urchins imitating the soldiers. Don José and Lieutenant Zuniga join Moralès and the other men. Zuniga asks José about the young women who work in the cigarette factory, but José is not interested in them. Zuniga then teases José about his interest in Micaëla; José admits that he loves her.
The women at the factory come out for their break. They seductively smoke their cigarettes, to the delight of the men. Then Carmen, the gypsy, comes out of the factory, attracting all the attention to herself. The men beg her to tell them when she will love them; she replies, maybe never, maybe tomorrow, but certainly not today, for love is like a rebellious bird and cannot be captured so easily (“Habanera”). The men continue to plead for her favours, but her eye lights on the inattentive José. She tosses a flower at him and, as the factory bell rings, runs back to work with the others. The crowd disperses.
Carmen was written by French composer, Georges Bizet (1838–1875). Bizet composed the opera in collaboration with top librettists of the time, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, who adapted the story based on Prosper Mérimée’s novella of the same title.
Feb 9, 2018 · Bizet wrote a fair few great works – the Te Deum for a start – but in Carmen he really went up a gear in terms of writing entrancing melodies. Just listen to this – the Toreador’s song performed by the bullfighter Escamillo in Act II of the opera – and try and resist humming along. The story of Carmen.
Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire.
Feb 22, 2013 · Ten facts, basic and otherwise, about Georges Bizet’s Carmen: Carmen had its premiere in Paris in 1875. Two characters are at the center: Carmen, who demands her freedom at any cost, and her lover, Don José.
Bizet wrote Carmen in the ‘correct form’ for the venue; Opéra comique was the French version of German Singspiel, an opera both sung and spoken. But in content, all was not well.
