THE ORIGINAL: MERIMÉE
“Rage seized me. I drew my knife. I wanted her to be afraid and to plead for mercy, but that woman was a demon. ‘For the last time,’ I cried, ‘will you stay with me?’ “‘No! No! No!’ she cried, stamping her foot; and she took off the ring I had given her and threw it into the bushes. “Twice I stabbed her. It was with Garcia the One-eyed’s knife, which I had taken when I broke mine. She fell at the second thrust without a cry. It seems to me that I can still see her great black eyes staring through me; then they became glazed and closed.” MORE

PREMIERE, FAILURE, TRIUMPH
The entry of Carmen was well received and applauded, as was the duet between Micaela and Don José. As the first act ended there were many curtain calls. Backstage, Bizet was surrounded, congratulated! The second act, less enthusiasm. It opened brilliantly. The entrance of Escamillo was most effective. But then the audience cooled…surprised, unhappy, ill-at-ease. Backstage, fewer admirers, congratulations restrained. No enthusiasm at all for the third act except for Micaela’s aria. The audience was frigid during the fourth act. Only a few devotees of Bizet came backstage. Carmen was not a success. Meilhac and I walked home with Bizet. Our hearts were heavy. MORE

GYPSY TRASH
In a letter written to George Sand a few years before Carmen’s premiere, Gustav Flaubert wrote: [I visited] a camp of Gypsies at Rouen…they excite the hatred of the bourgeois…that hatred is linked to something complex; it is found in all orderly people. It is the hatred that they feel for the Bedouin, the heretic, the philosopher, the poet, and there is fear in that hatred.” MORE

“DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON”
Whether we see José as victim or Carmen as martyr, we are forever caught in the mirror image of a master/slave relationship, where the two main characters are reflections of each other. In the corrida of passionate love, both Carmen and José occupy in turn the position of bullfighter and bull. Beyond the psychological interpretation, the text itself suggests the interchangeability of the two roles having Carmen wield a knife in the first act, and José stab her in the last. MORE

“THANK YOU FOR SMOKING”
The long European history linking women to smoking—as desirable yet possibly dangerous—was as strong in France as anywhere else. By the nineteenth century women who smoked—as the outraged response to George Sand’s cigars showed—were decidedly transgressive: their act signaled either dangerous rebellion or…sexual availability. MORE

“HER INFINITE VARIETY”
Carmen is (probably unarguably) the most performed opera in the repertory and Carmen herself (with a little help from Merimée) the most recognizable (and even mythic) of all operatic characters. The range of her influence is almost incalculable…movies (more than 70), musical comedies, cartoons, ballets, MTV adaptations, etc., etc., are spread all over the cultural map. There is even (thanks to Jim Henson and the Muppets) on YouTube an orange that sings the “Habanera.” MORE

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