Bizet Carmen

It is hard to understand why Carmen was a failure when first performed at the Opéra Comique in 1875. The reason must have been its story – an impossible love between Don José, an honourable but in many ways naive soldier, and Carmen, a free-spirited gypsy girl, who arouses sympathy because of her blunt honesty and independency from social conventions, which she defends to the death.

Georges Bizet’s music contains a great number of song – and dancelike pieces which are based on Spanish folklore, rather than the traditional couplets and arias that audiences expected at the time.

At least we can forgive them for their initial disapproval because Carmen was performed a hundred times more in Paris during the next ten years and has remained popular ever since.

For us, its subject matter fits perfectly with the themes of our season. Moreover, Carmen shares its librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy with Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne, which we present a few weeks later.

We have assembled a spectacular cast for you. Mainly of French-speaking origin, it is led by Marina Viotti, who gives her debut with at Monte-Carlo, and Benjamin Bernheim, who sings the part of Don José for the very first time.