Under the midday Andalusian sun, the men watch the workers at the tobacco factory. Carmen attracts everyone's attention. Only the Basque soldier Don José pays her no attention. Only when Carmen throws him an acacia blossom is he captivated by her wild beauty from then on. He sacrifices his military career, leaving him as a deserted soldier with only his love for her. His possessiveness makes Carmen's feelings grow cold. Instead, she turns to the successful torero Escamillo. But Don José can neither live with nor without Carmen and murders her. Even in the face of death, however, Carmen does not give up her desire for freedom. She dies as she lived and loved: as a free woman.
The work experienced a fiasco in Paris at (world premiere) in 1875 due to its drastic, veristic study of a milieu. Bizet, who was in poor health, died three months after (world premiere) at the age of just 36 and was therefore unable to compose the recitatives planned for the first performance in Vienna. This was done by his friend Ernest Guiraud, who helped the opera achieve world fame with this through-composed version. In the meantime, the original form, typical of the opéra comique genre, has been returned to, with dialogues that lend Bizet's masterpiece gripping authenticity.
Director Arila Siegert, set designer Hans Dieter Schaal and costume designer Marie-Luise Strandt, who have already staged Fauré's Pénélope, Weber's Freischütz, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and most recently Verdi's Masked Ball at Chemnitz Opera, tell the story of the woman who breaks with all social conventions as an arena of passions from which there is no escape.
