Carmen nonetheless remains one of the most visceral and mesmerizing figures in music theater, a bombshell who figuratively explodes all over the place, leaving the debris of at least one soul, her putative lover Don Jose, in the ensuing rubble.

A coquettish Gypsy with a fiery temper, a seductress out for herself and little else, Carmen has very little vulnerability or even a standard moral compass to which most audience members can relate. Carmen the character is one of the most complex females in all of operatic repertoire, and not one who's all that likable when you get right down to it. This 2002 Glyndebourne production restores the original version that Tchaikovsky saw and admired, and while it may be slightly disconcerting (no pun intended) to have spoken moments in opera, this wonderful production makes a stirring case for getting back to Bizet's original version once and for all.Ĭarmen pioneered the operatic trend of verismo, which might be likened to cinema verite-an attempt to depict realistic subjects in a less declamatory nature than is the norm in grand opera. When Bizet died, that task was handed over to his friend Ernest Guiraud, whose more pedestrian work hindered Bizet's frankly flashier style. While that prediction turned out to be largely correct, what Tchaikovsky couldn't have foreseen was the untimely death of Carmen's composer Georges Bizet shortly after the premiere, a premiere that met with less than radiant responses and which convinced Bizet he needed to rework the libretto to eliminate spoken interludes and instead compose more traditional recitatives. When Tchaikovsky saw the opera shortly after it premiered at the Opera Comique in 1875, he predicted that within 10 years it would be the most popular opera in the world. Carmen is probably one of the few operas that even the unwashed masses can hum large segments, or at least a tune or two, from.

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