Carmen di George Bizet is an opéra-comique in four scenes to a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy from the 1845 novella of the same name by Prosper Mérimée. It was composed between 1874 and 1875 for the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where Bizet himself oversaw the preparation of the staging during the months of rehearsals, continuing to rework the score until its premiere on 3 March 1875. The production continued afterwards, and the composer produced a version without the canonical spoken/recited sections of the opéra-comique in view of a Viennese staging, where the genre was little frequented, replacing the spoken parts with recitatives. The 1877 edition, which is the most represented today, sticks to the ‘Viennese variant’. The adaptation of the novella saw several changes, including the introduction of the character of Micaela and the greater prominence given to the bullfighter Escamillo. The story takes place in Seville around 1820, where the soldier Don José is seduced by the gypsy girl Carmen, moving away from his world and closer to hers in a spiral of jealousy and lawlessness that will lead him to kill her and finally hand himself over to the gendarmes. The seductive power of the protagonist constitutes the fulcrum around which the other characters move, and will also be the reason for her tragic fate. Carmen is a free, voluptuous but determined heroine, deeply insubordinate to any imposition. Bizet uses various compositional devices that together make Carmen a decidedly up-to-date and contemporary opéra-comique, with references to the innovations of Verdi, Wagner and Italian verismo.
