title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Thousands of games shops" participate in Friday Night Magic (FNM), an event sponsored by the WPN; it is advertised as "the event where new players can approach the game, and start building their community". FNM offers both sanctioned tournament formats and all formats. In 2018, "The New Yorker" reported that "even as it has grown in popularity and size, Magic flies low to the ground. It thrives on the people who gather at lunch tables, in apartments, or in one of the six thousand stores worldwide that Wizards has licensed to put on weekly tournaments dubbed Friday Night Magic". FNM tournaments can act as a stepping-stone to more competitive play.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Magic" tournaments regularly occur in gaming stores and other venues. Larger tournaments with hundreds of competitors from around the globe sponsored by Wizards of the Coast are arranged many times every year, with substantial cash prizes for the top finishers. A number of websites report on tournament news, give complete lists for the most currently popular decks, and feature articles on current issues of debate about the game. Additionally, the WPN maintains a set of rules for being able to sanction tournaments, as well as runs its own circuit.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The WPN ran the as a series of major tournaments to attract interest. The right to compete in a Pro Tour had to be earned by either winning a Pro Tour Qualifier Tournament or being successful in a previous tournament on a similar level. The Pro Tour would take place over the course of three days. The first two days were usually structured in a Swiss format. On the final day, the top eight players would compete with each other in a single-elimination format to select the winner. At the end of the competition in a Pro Tour, players were awarded depending on their finishing place. If the player finished high enough, they would also be awarded prize money. Frequent winners of these events made names for themselves in the "Magic" community, such as Luis Scott-Vargas, Gabriel Nassif, Kai Budde and Jon Finkel. As a promotional tool, the DCI launched the in 2005 to honor selected players.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: At the end of the year the would be held. The World Championship functioned like a Pro Tour, except that competitors had to present their skill in three different formats (usually Standard, booster draft, and a second constructed format) rather than one. Another difference was that invitations to the World Championship could not be gained through Pro Tour Qualifiers. They could only be earned via the national championship of a country. Most countries sent their top four players of the tournament as representatives, though nations with minor "Magic" playing communities would sometimes only send one player. The World Championship also has a team-based competition, where the national teams compete with each other.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: At the beginning of the World Championship, new members were inducted into the Hall of Fame. The tournament also concluded the current season of tournament play and at the end of the event, the player who earned the most Pro Points during the year was awarded the title "". The player who earned the most Pro Points and did not compete in any previous season was awarded the title "".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Invitation to a Pro Tour, Pro Points, and prize money could also be earned in lesser tournaments called that were open to the general public and held more frequently throughout the year. Grand Prix events were usually the largest "Magic" tournaments, sometimes drawing more than 2,000 players. The largest "Magic" tournament ever held was Grand Prix: Las Vegas in June 2013 with a total of 4,500 players.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2018, Wizards of the Coast announced that 2019 would be the last season for The Pro Tour and the Pro Club. With these changes, the system eliminated Nationals, the World Magic Cup, and the Team Series.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Starting with a partial season in 2019, the new organized play structure for Magic: The Gathering split into digital and tabletop play with separate Mythic Championships for and tabletop play. The Magic Pro League (MPL) included the top 32 players from the previous season, although two players turned down their spots. The players were notably given a $75,000/year salary and the opportunity to win much more money in exclusive, tournaments. The new system consisted of several interconnected circuits: The Player's Tour, The Magic Pro League, Challengers/Rivals, Tabletop Mythic Championships, and Arena Mythic Championships. The new organized play system did maintain the yearly World Championship, but it was made a more exclusive 16 player tournament. In order to compete in the World Championship in this structure you must have placed top four in MPL, placed top four in the Challengers/Rivals League, won one of the seven tabletop or arena Mythic Championships, or won of the previous year's World Championship.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: While the Mythic Championships and Magic Pro League catered to the highest level of competitive play, the Player's Tour system was meant to give a path for average players to go from their local game store to the World Championship. There were three regional Player's Tours for Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas. There were several ways to qualify for a reginal Player's Tour, including local store events, accumulating points at Gran Prix/MagicFests, and winning on .


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2021, it was announced that the competitive play system would undergo another shift. Wizards of the Coast stressed a return to in-person play and the disbandment of The Magic Pro League after the 2021-2022 season. According to several players from the MPL, the messaging they received was that competitive Magic would no longer be supported as a full-time, high-paid esports profession.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: After announcing that The Magic Pro League would no longer be supported, Wizards of the Coast announced a return to the branding of The Pro Tour. With a simplified structure, the new Pro Tour system kept some of the original aspects from the system introduced in 2005, like a point system and the World Championship tournament each year. The new system starts players at Regional Championship qualifiers, which are exclusively held by local game shops. Winners of local qualifiers advance to Regional Championships which would be comparable to a Grand Prix in the previous systems. If a player performs well enough at their Regional Championship, they can qualify for a Pro Tour tournament. Players who earned 10 wins in the previous pro tour or have enough Adjusted Match Win (AMW) points from the previous season also earn a Pro Tour Qualification. The World Championship under the new system will have around 128 players who will compete for a $1,000,000 prize pool.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Richard Garfield had an early attachment to games during his youth: before settling down in Oregon, his father, an architect, had brought his family to Bangladesh and Nepal during his work projects. Garfield did not speak the native languages, but was able to make friends with the local youth through playing cards or marbles. Once back in the United States, he had heard of "Dungeons & Dragons" but neither his local game store nor his friends had a copy, so he developed his own version of what he thought the game would be based on the descriptions he had read, which considered closer to "Clue", with players moving from room to room fighting monsters with a fixed end-goal. When Garfield eventually got copies of the "Dungeons & Dragons" rulesets, he was surprised that it was a more open-ended game but was "dreadfully written". "Dungeons & Dragons"s open-endedness inspired him, like many others, to develop their own game ideas from it. For Garfield, this was a game he called "Five Magics", based on five elemental magics that were drawn from geographically-diverse areas. While this remained the core concept of "Five Magics", Garfield continued to refine the game while growing up, often drastically changing the base type of game, though never planned to publish this game.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 1991, Garfield was a doctoral candidate in combinatorial mathematics at University of Pennsylvania and had been brought on as an adjunct professor at Whitman College. During his candidacy, he developed his ideas and had playtested "RoboRally", a board game based on moving robots through a factory filled with hazards. Garfield had been seeking publishers for the title, and his colleague, Mike Davis, suggested the newly formed Wizards of the Coast, a small outfit established by Peter Adkison, a systems analyst for Boeing in Seattle. In mid-1991, the three arranged to meet in Oregon near Garfield's parents' home. Adkison was impressed by "RoboRally" but considered that it had too many logistics and would be too risky for him to publish. He told Garfield and Davis that he liked Garfield's ideas and that he was looking for a portable game that could be played in the downtime that frequently occurs at gaming conventions.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: After the meeting, Garfield remained in Oregon to contemplate Adkison's advice. While hiking near Multnomah Falls, he was inspired to take his "Five Magics" concept but apply it to collectible color-themed cards, so that each player could make a customizable deck, something each player could consider part of their identity. Garfield arranged to meet with Adkison back in Seattle within the week, and when Adkison heard the idea, he recognized the potential that this would be a game that could be expanded on indefinitely with new cards in contrast to most typical tabletop games; Adkison later wrote on the idea on a USENET post "If executed properly, [the cards] would make us millions." Adkison immediately agreed to produce it.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Garfield returned to Pennsylvania and set off designing the game's core rules and initial cards, with about 150 completed in the few months after his return. The type of gameplay centered on each color remained consistent with how "Five Magics" had been and with how "Magic: The Gathering" would stay in the future, such as red representing aggressive attacks. Other games also influenced the design at this point, with Garfield citing games like "Cosmic Encounter" and "Strat-o-matic Baseball" as games that differ each time they are played because of different sets of cards being in play. Initial "cards" were based on using available copyrighted art, and copied to paper to be tested by groups of volunteers at the university. About six months after the meeting with Adkison, Garfield had refined the first complete version of his game. Garfield also began to set the narrative of the game in "Dominia", a of infinite "planes" from which players, as wizards, can draw power from, which would allow for the vast array of creatures and magics that he was planning for the cards.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Garfield has stated that two major influences in his creation of "Magic: the Gathering" were the games "Cosmic Encounter", which first used the concept that normal rules could sometimes be overridden, and "Dungeons & Dragons". One of the ""Magic" Golden Rules" states that "Whenever a card's text directly contradicts these rules, the card takes precedence." The "Comprehensive Rules", a detailed rulebook, exists to clarify conflicts.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Simultaneously, Adkison sought investment into Wizards of the Coast to prepare to publish the game. The company had already committed to completing "The Primal Order" rulebook, aimed to be compatible with most other role-playing systems on the market, which most investment was drawn to. He had to bring in a number of local Cornish artists to create the fantasy art for Garfield's cards, offering them shares in Wizards of the Coast in payment. After "The Primal Order" was published in 1992, Wizards of the Coast was sued by Palladium for copyright infringement, a case that was settled out of court and with the result that a second printing of "The Primal Order" removed the rules relevant to Palladium's system, but this case also financially harmed Wizards of the Coast. Adkison decided to create a separate company, Garfield Games, for publishing the card game.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: While the game was simply called "Magic" through most of playtesting, when the game had to be officially named a lawyer informed them that the name "Magic" was too generic to be trademarked. "Mana Clash" was instead chosen to be the name used in the first solicitation of the game. However, everybody involved with the game continued to refer to it simply as "Magic". After further legal consultation, it was decided to rename the game "Magic: The Gathering", thus enabling the name to be trademarked.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: By 1993, Garfield and Adkison had gotten everything ready to premiere "Magic: The Gathering" at that year's Gen Con in Milwaukee that August, but did not have the funds for a production run to have shipped to game stores in time. Adkison took a single box of cards with a handful of complete decks to the Wizards booth at Origins Game Fair hoping to secure the funds by demonstrating the game. Among those he demonstrated to were representatives of Wargames West, manufacturers of historical tactics games; the representatives eventually brought their CEO over, and after seeing the game, took Adkison to dinner and negotiated funding terms. Adkison returned with , enough to make the necessary orders.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Magic: The Gathering" underwent a general release on August 5, 1993. After shipping the orders, Adkison and his wife drove towards Milwaukee while making stops at game stores and demonstrate the game to drum up support for Gen Con. Their initial stops were quiet, but word of mouth from previous stops spread, and as they traveled south and west, they found larger and larger crowds anxiously awaiting their arrival. Garfield met up with Adkison at Gen Con, where their shipment of 2.5 million cards had been delayed a day. Despite this, by the end of the convention, they had completely sold out.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Magic" was an immediate success for Wizards of the Coast. By October 1993, they had sold out their supply of 10 million cards. Wizards was even reluctant to advertise the game because they were unable to keep pace with existing demand. Initially "Magic" attracted many "Dungeons & Dragons" players, but the following included all types of other people as well.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The success of the initial edition prompted a reissue later in 1993, along with expansions to the game. "" was released as the first in December 1993. New expansions and revisions of the base game ("Core Sets") have since been released on a regular basis, amounting to four releases a year. By the end of 1994, the game had printed over a billion cards. Until the release of "" in 1996, expansions were released on an irregular basis. Beginning in 2009 one revision of the core set and a set of three related expansions called a "block" were released every year. This system was revised in 2015, with the Core Set being eliminated and blocks now consisting of two sets, released semiannually. A further revision occurred in 2018, reversing the elimination of the core sets and no longer constraining sets to blocks. While the essence of the game has always stayed the same, the rules of "Magic" have undergone three major revisions with the release of the "" in 1994, in 1999, and "Magic 2010" in July 2009. With the release of the "" in 2003, "Magic" also received a major visual redesign.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 1996, Wizards of the Coast established the "", a circuit of tournaments where players can compete for sizeable cash prizes over the course of a single weekend-long tournament. In 2009 the top prize at a single tournament was US$40,000. Sanctioned through the DCI, the tournaments added an element of prestige to the game by virtue of the cash payouts and media coverage from within the community. For a brief period of time, ESPN2 televised the tournaments.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: By April 1997, billion cards had been sold. In 1999, Wizards of The Coast was acquired by Hasbro for $325 million, making "Magic" a Hasbro game.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: A patent was granted to Wizards of the Coast in 1997 for "a novel method of game play and game components that in one embodiment are in the form of trading cards" that includes claims covering games whose rules include many of "Magic"'s elements in combination, including concepts such as changing orientation of a game component to indicate use (referred to in the rules of "Magic" and later of Garfield's games such as "" as "tapping") and constructing a deck by selecting cards from a larger pool. The patent has aroused criticism from some observers, who believe some of its claims to be invalid. In 2003, the patent was an element of a larger legal dispute between Wizards of the Coast and Nintendo, regarding trade secrets related to Nintendo's "Pokémon Trading Card Game". The legal action was settled out of court, and its terms were not disclosed.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: While unofficial methods of online play existed previously, "" (often shortened to "MTGO" or "Modo"), an official online version of the game, was released in 2002. A new, updated version of "Magic Online" was released in April 2008.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In February 2018, Wizards noted that between the years of 2008 and 2016 they had printed over 20 billion "Magic: the Gathering" cards. In 2022, "CBR" reported that "over 20,000 unique "MTG" cards have been created" since the game's release.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Magic: The Gathering" cards are produced in much the same way as normal playing cards. Each "Magic" card, approximately 63 × 88 mm in size (2.5 by 3.5 inches), has a face which displays the card's name and rules text as well as an illustration appropriate to the card's concept. 23,318 unique cards have been produced for the game ,


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: many of them with variant editions, artwork, or layouts, and 600–1000 new ones are added each year. The first "Magic" cards were printed exclusively in English, but current sets are also printed in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The overwhelming majority of "Magic" cards are issued and marketed in the form of sets. For the majority of its history there were two types: the Core Set and the themed expansion sets. Under Wizards of the Coast's current production and marketing scheme, a new set is released quarterly. Various products are released with each set to appeal to different segments of the "Magic" playing community:


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Shards of Alara" also debuted mythic rares (red-orange), which replace one in eight rare cards on average. There are also premium versions of every card with holographic foil, randomly inserted into some boosters in place of a common, which replace about one in seventy cards.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: As of 2018, the number of consecutive sets set on the same world varies. For example, although "Dominaria" takes place in one set, the "Guilds of Ravnica" block takes place over three sets. In addition, small sets have been removed due to developmental problems and all sets are now large. Prior to this change, sets were put into two-set blocks, starting with a large set and ending with a smaller one three months later. Prior to 2016, expansion sets were released in a three-set block (again, beginning with a larger set followed by two smaller sets). These sets consist almost exclusively of newly designed cards. In contrast with the wide-ranging Core Set, each expansion focuses on a subset of mechanics and ties into a set storyline. Expansions also dedicate several cards to a handful of particular, often newly introduced, game mechanics.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The Core Sets began to be released annually (previously biennially) in July 2009 coinciding with the name change from to "Magic 2010". This shift also introduced new, never before printed cards into the core set, something that previously had never been done. However, core sets were discontinued following the release of "Magic Origins", on July 17, 2015, at the same time that two-set blocks were introduced. Wizards of Coast announced on June 12, 2017 that they plan on revamping and reintroducing a revamped core set, and Core Set 2019 was released on July 13, 2018.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In addition to the quarterly set releases, "Magic" cards are released in other products as well, such as the "Planechase" and "" spin-off games. These combine reprinted "Magic" cards with new, oversized cards with new functionality. "Magic" cards are also printed specifically for collectors, such as the "From the Vault" and "Premium Deck Series" sets, which contain exclusively premium foil cards.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2003, starting with the "" Core Set, the game went through its biggest visual change since its creation—a new card frame layout was developed to allow more rules text and larger art on the cards, while reducing the thick, colored border to a minimum. The new frame design aimed to improve contrast and readability using black type instead of the previous white, a new font, and partitioned areas for the name, card type, and power and toughness. The card frame was changed once again in Core Set 2015, which maintained the same templating, but made the card sleeker and added a holo-foil stamp to every rare and mythic card to curtail counterfeiting.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: For the first few years of its production, "Magic: The Gathering" featured a small number of cards with names or artwork with demonic or occultist themes, in 1995 the company elected to remove such references from the game. In 2002, believing that the depiction of demons was becoming less controversial and that the game had established itself sufficiently, Wizards of the Coast reversed this policy and resumed printing cards with "demon" in their names.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2019, starting with "Throne of Eldraine", booster packs have a chance of containing an alternate art "showcase card". This is to increase the reward of buying boosters and making it more exciting.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: A new format, "Jumpstart", was introduced in July 2020 alongside the Core 2021 set. These are special themed 20-card booster packs, based on nearly 500 cards, several being reprints of cards from previous sets, with 121 possible packs available. Each is a curated set rather than random selection of cards, built around a theme, such as "Pirates" or "Unicorns". Each theme has a small number of possible card sets on that theme, distributed on a rarity basis, such that the specific booster that a player purchases will still be a random selection. Because many are reprints, not all Jumpstart cards are available to be used in the various Constructed formats but can be used in other modes of play. Jumpstart was designed to make it much easier to get into "Magic" by eliminating the deck-building but still providing some customization and randomness that comes with card acquisition and deck building. A special Jumpstart format was introduced for these boosters, where players select two desired themes, and are given a random booster from those themes and sufficient land cards to make a 60-card deck.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Garfield had established that "Magic: The Gathering" took place in a Multiverse with countless possible worlds (planes), the game's primary events taking place on the planes of Dominaria, Ravnica, Zendikar, and Innistrad. Only extremely rare beings called Planeswalkers are capable of traversing the Multiverse. This allows the game to frequently change worlds so as to renew its mechanical inspiration, while maintaining planeswalkers as recurrent, common elements across worlds. Players represent planeswalkers able to draw on the magics and entities of these planes to do battle with others. Story elements were told through the cards' flavor text, and a driving narrative. The first expansion "Arabian Nights" designed by Garfield was based on "One Thousand and One Nights" folklore and include figures from that like Aladdin.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Early expansions were designed separately, each with their own internal narrative to establish concepts, keywords, and flavoring. With "Weatherlight", the team wanted to start a longer arc that would cover multiple expansions over five years that would also extend into comics, magazines, and other media. However, with a change in oversight of the "Magic: The Gathering" team, player fatigue, and a disconnect between the novels and cards, this plan was scrapped. returning to the general approach of designing a narrative specific to one expansion.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Wizards, which had regained the license from Harper Prism and Armada (an imprint of Acclaim Entertainment) to write novels for "Magic: The Gathering", still worked to integrate the novel writing staff with the game designers so that there was some cohesion between the game and books, but did not seek to make this a key priority as the "Weatherlight" goal had been.<ref name = "ask wizards 07/01/06"></ref> Novels soon gave way to eBooks and later to shorter stories posted on the Wizards' website which fared better in terms of popularity.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2017, Wizards hired novelist and scriptwriter Nic Kelman as their Head of Story and Entertainment. Kelman became responsible for crafting the "Magic: The Gathering" story bible from all established lore as reference for further expansions and for the external media. This task helped Kelmen to prepare the novel "" that was published just prior to the new set "War of the Spark", with cards retaining continuity with the novel and past events.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Each card has an illustration to represent the flavor of the card, often reflecting the setting of the expansion for which it was designed. Much of "Magic"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s early artwork was commissioned with little specific direction or concern for visual cohesion. One infamous example was the printing of the creature Whippoorwill without the "flying" ability even though its art showed a bird in flight. The art direction team later decided to impose a few constraints so that the artistic vision more closely aligned with the design and development of the cards. Each block of cards now has its own style guide with sketches and descriptions of the various races and places featured in the setting.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: A few early sets experimented with alternate art for cards. However, Wizards came to believe that this impeded easy recognition of a card and that having multiple versions caused confusion when identifying a card at a glance. Consequently, alternate art is now only used sparingly and mostly for promotional cards. When older cards are reprinted in new sets, however, Wizards of the Coast usually prints them with new art to make the older cards more collectible, though they sometimes reuse well-received artwork if it makes sense thematically.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: At the back of each card, at the end of the word "Deckmaster", a pen stroke is visible. According to Wizards of the Coast, this is a printing error which was never corrected, as all card backs have to look the same.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: As "Magic" has expanded across the globe, its artwork has had to change for its international audience. Artwork has been edited or given alternate art to comply with the governmental standards. For example, the portrayal of skeletons and most undead in artwork was prohibited by the Chinese government until 2008.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Wizards of the Coast has introduced specials cards and sets that include cross-promotional elements with other brands typically as promotional cards, not legal for Standard play and may not be playable even in eternal formats. Four promotional cards were sold at HasCon 2017, featuring three other Hasbro brands, Transformers, Nerf, and "Dungeons & Dragons". A special three-card set based on characters from "" (another Hasbro brand) was sold as both physical product and digital items within "MTG Arena" to support the Extra Life charity. The "Ikoria, Lair of Behemoths" set released in April 2020 included 16 kaiju monsters from Toho as promotional cards, such as Godzilla. The new Universes Beyond series will bring other crossover properties into "Magic" such as "Warhammer 40,000" and "The Lord of the Rings". "Polygon" reported that the "Lord of the Rings" themed set, planned for 2023, "will be a complete, Modern-legal set of cards" and "it will be a full product line. That means players will be able to draft cards for pick-up play, and compete in multiplayer games with one of four preconstructed Commander decks".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The Secret Lair promotional series has also been used to introduce crossover cards from other brands. As part of the Secret Lair set in 2020, a number of cards were made that featured crossovers with AMC's television show "The Walking Dead", which the development team felt was a natural fit since zombies were already part of the "Magic" game. A limited set of land cards in the Secret Lair featured paintings from Bob Ross, licensed through his estate. In June 2021, Wizards of the Coast announced a Secret Lair based on "Dungeons and Dragon cartoon". A planned 2021 Secret Lair drop will feature cards based on "Stranger Things", while "Fortnite" and "Street Fighter" will be featured in the Secret Lair drop in 2022.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Additionally, Wizards has continued to develop a strong connection between the "Magic" and the "Dungeons & Dragons" "(D&D)" . Greg Tito, Wizards of the Coast Senior Communications Manager, said that "there is a huge crossover between "Magic" players and "D&D" players". In July 2021, a "D&D" themed set expansion, "", was released; it is based on the "Forgotten Realms" campaign setting. Separately, elements of "Magic" have been brought into the role-playing game. The first such official crossover was a "D&D" campaign setting book for the plane of Ravnica, a "Magic" expansion introduced in 2005 and 2006 and later revisited in the 2018 expansion "Guilds of Ravnica". "Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica" was also published in 2018 to correspond with the newer "Magic" expansion's release. A second campaign setting book, "Mythic Odysseys of Theros" (2020), introduced the plane of Theros to "D&D" and corresponded with the 2020 "Theros Beyond Death" expansion. "" (2021) introduces the as a "D&D" campaign setting; it was released in December 2021.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Scott Haring reviewed "Magic: The Gathering" in "Pyramid" #4 (Nov./Dec., 1993), and stated that "Not only is "Magic" the best gaming bargain to come down the pike in memory; not only is it the most original idea in years; it's also a delightfully addictive game that you and your friends will find impossible to put down." Marcelo A. Figueroa reviewed the game in a 1993 issue of "Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer", noting both positives and negatives, stating that, "despite all of its flaws, it's as endearing as Star Fleet Battles". Overall, Figueroa rated the game a 7 out of 10.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: A 2004 article in "USA Today" suggested that playing "Magic" might help improve the social and mental skills of some of the players. The article interviewed players' parents who believe that the game, similar to sports, teaches children how to more gracefully win and lose. "Magic" also contains a great amount of strategy and vocabulary that children may not be exposed to on a regular basis. Parents also claimed that playing "Magic" helped keep their children out of trouble, such as using illegal drugs or joining criminal gangs. On the other hand, the article also briefly mentions that "Magic" can be highly addictive, leading to parents worried about their children's "Magic" obsession. In addition, until 2007, some of the better players had opportunities to compete for a small number of scholarships.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: I love games that challenge and change our definition of adventure gaming, and "Magic: The Gathering" is definitely one of a very short list of titles that has accomplished that elusive goal. By combining the collecting and trading elements of baseball cards with the fantasy play dynamics of role-playing games, "Magic" created a whole new genre of product that changed our industry forever."


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2015, "The Guardian" reported that an estimated 20 million people played "Magic" around the world and that the game had a thriving tournament scene, a professional league and a weekly organized game program called Friday Night Magic.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: A July 2019 article in "Bloomberg" reported that ""Magic" is part of the [Hasbro’s] 'franchise brands,' a segment that accounted for $2.45 billion in net revenue for the company last year, bigger than its emerging, partner and gaming brand units combined. [Chris] Cocks said "Magic" accounts for a 'meaningful portion' of that, with KeyBanc estimating the game’s contribution is already more than $500 million—including both the physical cards and the nascent digital version. Of the franchise brands, only "Magic" and Monopoly logged revenue gains last year". "", in open beta testing since September 2018, is a free-to-play digital collectible card game with microtransaction purchases based on "Magic". Brett Andress, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, predicts "Magic: The Gathering Arena" adding as much as 98 cents a share in incremental earnings to results by 2021 (which is at least a 20% boost). Joe Deaux, for "Bloomberg", wrote that "nearly 3 million active users will be playing Arena by the end of this year, KeyBanc estimates, and that could swell to nearly 11 million by 2021 according to its bull case scenario—especially if it expands from PCs to mobile. That’s just active users, and registered users could be higher by the millions. Already, according to Hasbro, a billion games have been played online".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In addition, several individuals including Richard Garfield and Donato Giancola won personal awards for their contributions to "Magic".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The success of "Magic: The Gathering" led to the creation of similar games by other companies as well as Wizards of the Coast themselves. Companion Games produced the Galactic Empires CCG (the first science fiction trading card game), which allowed players to pay for and design their own promotional cards, while TSR created the "Spellfire" game, which eventually included five editions in six languages, plus twelve expansion sets. Wizards of the Coast produced "" (now called "Vampire: The Eternal Struggle"), a game about modern-day vampires. Other similar games included trading card games based on "Star Trek" and "Star Wars". "Magic" is often cited as an example of a 1990s collecting fad, though the game's makers were able to overcome the bubble traditionally associated with collecting fads. Its popularity often was associated with addictive behavior similar to gambling through the allure of gaining new cards in booster packs and expansions, and due to this, "Magic: The Gathering" has been sometimes derogatorily called "cardboard crack".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: There was a brief resurgence of a satanic panic over "Magic: The Gathering" in the mid-1990s, following a similar panic over "Dungeons and Dragons", though did not persist for long.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: There is an active secondary market in individual cards among players and game shops. This market arose from two different facets: players seeking specific cards to help complete or enhance their existing decks and thus were less concerned on the value of the cards themselves, and from collectors seeking the rarer cards for their monetary value to complete collections. Many physical and online stores sell single cards or "playsets" of four of a card. Common cards rarely sell for more than a few cents and are usually sold in bulk. Uncommon cards and weak rare cards typically sell from 10¢ up to US$1. The more expensive cards in Standard tournament play—a rotating format featuring the newest cards designed to be fairer and more accessible to newer players—are typically priced between $1 and $25. A second format, Modern, comprising an intermediate level of power and allowing most cards released since roughly 2003, has staple cards that often value between $5 and $100, with higher rarity and demand but reprints every few years intended to keep the format affordable. Foil versions of rare and mythic rare cards are typically priced at about twice as much as the regular versions. Some of the more sought-after rare and mythic rare cards can have foil versions that cost up to three or four times more than the non-foil versions.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: A few of the oldest cards, due to smaller printings and limited distribution, are highly valued and rare. This is partly due to the Reserved List, a list of cards from the sets "Alpha" to "Urza's Destiny" (1994–1999) that Wizards has promised never to reprint. Legacy-only cards on the Reserved List, which are barred from reprint under a voluntary but genuine legal obligation, are in short supply due to smaller print runs of the game in its oldest days, and may be worth $200 to $1,000 or higher. And certain Vintage cards—the oldest cards in Magic, with most on the Reserved List, such as the so-called "Power Nine"—can easily cost more than $1,000 apiece. The most expensive card that was in regular print (versus a promotional or special printing) is the "Black Lotus", which are currently worth thousands of dollars. In 2019, an anonymous buyer purchased an unsigned "Pristine 9.5 grade" Beckett Grading Services-graded Alpha Black Lotus for a record $166,100. A PSA "Gem Mint 10" graded Alpha "Black Lotus", framed in a case signed by its artist Christopher Rush, sold at auction for $511,100 in January 2021.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The secondary market started with comic book stores, and hobby shops displaying and selling cards, with the cards' values determined somewhat arbitrarily by the employees of the store. Hobbyist magazines, already tracking prices of sports trading cards, engaged with the "Magic" secondary market by surveying the stores to inquire on current prices to cards, which they then published. With the expansion of the Internet, prices of cards were determined by the number of tournament deck lists a given card would appear in. If a card was played in a tournament more frequently, the cost of the card would be higher (in addition to the market availability of the card). When eBay, Amazon, and other large online markets started to gain popularity, the "Magic" secondary market evolved substantially, with the site TCGPlayer.com launched in 2008 being the first that not only compiled the pricing data but allowed for players to buy and sell cards for "Magic" and other CCGs directly via the site. TCGPlayer developed a metric called the TCG Market Price for each card that was based on the most recent sales, allowing for near real-time valuation of a card in the same manner as a stock market. Buying and selling "Magic" cards online became a source of income for people who learned how to manipulate the market.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Today, the secondary market is so large and complex, it has become an area of study for consumer research called . Some people make a career out of market manipulation, creating mathematical models to analyze the growth of cards' worth, and predict the market value of both individual cards, and entire sets of cards. "Magic"s economy has also been tied to the introduction of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as "Magic" cards represent a physical asset that can be converted back and forth into the virtual currency. Nearly all of "Magic"s trading market is unregulated, and issues related to insider trading based on planned changes to the game have occurred. Active "Magic" financial traders have gained a sour reputation with more casual "Magic" players due to the lack of regulations, and that the market manipulations makes it costly for casual players to buy single cards simply for purposes for improving decks.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: As of late 2013, Wizards of the Coast has expressed concern over the increasing number of counterfeit cards in the secondary market. Wizards of the Coast has since made an effort to counteract the rise of counterfeits by introducing a new holofoil stamp on all rare and mythic rare cards as of Magic 2015.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: There are several examples of academic, peer-reviewed research concerning different aspects of "Magic: The Gathering". One study examined how players use their imaginations when playing. This research studied hobby players and showed how players sought to create and participate in an epic fantasy narrative. Another example used online auctions for "Magic" cards to test revenue outcomes for various auction types. A third example uses probability to examine "Magic" card-collecting strategies. Using a specific set of cards in a specialized manner has shown "Magic: The Gathering" to be Turing complete. Further, by proving this, the researchers assert that "Magic: The Gathering" is so complex as to be Turing complete and capable of being "programmed" to perform any task, that in terms of playing an actual game of "Magic", "the winning strategy is non-computable", making it an improbable challenge to devise computer opponents that can play "Magic" in a mathematically optimal manner.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: "Magic: The Gathering" video games, comics, and books have been produced under licensing or directly by Wizards of the Coast.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 2015 Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro published "Magic: The Gathering – Arena of the Planeswalkers". Arena of the Planeswalkers is a tactical boardgame where the players maneuver miniatures over a customizable board game, and the ruleset and terrain is based on Heroscape, but with an addition of spell cards and summoning. The original master set includes miniatures that represent the five Planeswalkers Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Nissa as well as select creatures from the Magic: The Gathering universe. They later released an expansion "Battle for Zendikar" featuring multi-color Planeswalkers Kiora and Ob Nixilis and a colorless Eldrazi Ruiner, and a second master set Shadows Over Innistrad which has 4 new Planeswalkers and also includes the addition of cryptoliths.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: There are currently two official video game adaptions of "Magic: The Gathering" for online play. "", first introduced in 2002, allows for players to buy cards and boosters and play against others including in officially-sanctioned tournaments for prize money. "", introduced in 2019, is fashioned after the free-to-play "Hearthstone", with players able to acquire new cards for free or through spending real-world funds. "Arena" currently limited online events with in-game prizes, but is currently being positioned by Wizards of the Coast to also serve as a means for official tournament play, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Both "Online" and "Arena" are regularly updated with new Core and Expansion cards as well as all rule changes made by Wizards.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In addition, Wizards of the Coast has worked with other developers for various iterations of "Magic: The Gathering" as a card game in a single-player game format. Microprose developed 1997 "" and its expansions, which had the player travel the world of Shandalar to challenge computer opponents, earn cards to customize their decks, improve their own Planeswalker attributes and ultimately defeat a powerful Planeswalker. Stainless Games developed a series of titles starting with 2009's "" and culminating with 2015's "Magic Duels", a free-to-play title. The "Duels" series did not feature full sets of "Magic" cards but selected subsets, and were initially designed to couple a challenging single-player experience with an advanced artificial-intelligence computer opponent. Later games in the series added in more deck-building options and multiplayer support.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Additional games have tried other variations of the "Magic: The Gathering" gameplay in other genres. Acclaim developed a real-time strategy game "" in 2003, in which the player's abilities were inspired by the various cards. Acclaim also had made a 1997 arcade game "Magic: The Gathering – Armageddon", a "Breakout"-style trackball-based game, but only as many as six cabinets were known to have been made. Hiberium and D3 Publisher developed "", combining deck building with match-3-style casual gaming. This was released in December 2015 as a freemium game and continues to be updated with new card sets from the physical game. Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment have started beta tests for "", a massively multiplayer online action role-playing game for personal computers and consoles. The title was cancelled ahead of its full release in 2021; executive producer Stephen Ricossa explained that the game's creative vision had "missed the mark".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In addition to official programs, a number of unofficial programs were developed to help user to track their "Magic: The Gathering" library and allow for rudimentary play between online players. Examples of such programs included "Apprentice", "Magic Workstation", "XMage", and "Cockatrice". These programs are not endorsed by Wizards of the Coast.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Harper Prism originally had an exclusive license to produce novels for "Magic: The Gathering", and published ten books between 1994 and 1996. Around 1997, the license reverted to Wizards, and the company published its own novels to better tie these works to the expansion sets from 1998 to about 2011.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 1994, Wizards of the Coast gave an exclusive license to Armada Comics, an imprint of Acclaim Entertainment, to publish comic books. The comics were not developed in concert with the game and were created with divergent ideas to the game. However, "much of the lore established" by Armada Comics was "the foundation from which the rest of continuity was built. [...] Some of the details changed (or were 'retconned', in popular fan speak), but for the most part the core of these stories stayed the same". The comics came to a sudden end in 1996 when Acclaim started to run into financial trouble. In 1998, a new four-issue limited comic series was published by Dark Horse.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In September 2011, Hasbro and IDW Publishing accorded to make a four-issue mini-series about "Magic: The Gathering" with a new story but heavily based on MTG elements and with a new Planeswalker called "Dack Fayden", the story of which mainly developed in the planes of Ravnica and Innistrad. The series started in February 2012. In 2018, a four-issue mini-series on the Planeswalker Chandra Nalaar was released. A sequel mini-series was announced in 2019, however, it was cancelled before publication.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In January 2021, Boom! Studios acquired the comic license of "Magic: The Gathering" and announced for a new "Magic" series for April 2021.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In January 2014, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights to produce a "Magic: The Gathering" film with Simon Kinberg as producer and TSG Entertainment (its co-financing partner), and Allspark Pictures as co-financers, after Universal Pictures allegedly dropped the film from their schedule (both Universal and Hasbro had been developing the original "Magic: The Gathering" film since 2009). In June 2014, Fox hired screenwriter Bryan Cogman to write the script for the film. In 2019 following Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox's assets, the film along with numerous other properties in development at Fox were cancelled.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In April 2016, "Enter the Battlefield", a documentary about life on the Magic Pro Tour was released. The film was written by Greg Collins, Nathan Holt, and Shawn Kornhauser.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The production team behind "The Toys That Made Us" will produce a documentary "Igniting the Spark, The Story of Magic: The Gathering".


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In June 2019, Variety reported that Joe and Anthony Russo, Wizards of the Coast, and Hasbro's Entertainment One have teamed with Netflix for an animated "Magic: The Gathering" television series. In July 2019 at the San Diego Comic-Con, the Russos revealed the logo of the animated series and spoke about doing a live-action series. During the Magic Showcase virtual event in August 2021, they revealed that Brandon Routh would be the voice of Gideon Jura, and that the series will premiere sometime in 2022.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: The Russo brothers, along with Henry Gilroy and Jose Molina, have since separated from the project, and production has been entrusted to Jeff Kline.


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: In 1998, PGI Limited created "", which was a parody of "Magic: The Gathering". Wizards of the Coast, which owned the rights to "Magic: The Gathering", took active steps to hinder the distribution of the game and successfully shut out PGI Limited from attending GenCon in July 1998. In an attempt to avoid breaching copyright and Richard Garfield's patent, each starter deck of "Havic" had printed on the back side, "This is a Parody", and on the bottom of the rule card was printed, ""Do not have each player": construct their own library of predetermined number of game components by examining and selecting [the] game components from [a] reservoir of game components or you may infringe on U.S. Patent No. 5,662,332 to Garfield."


title: Magic: The Gathering

text: Five official parody expansions of "Magic" exist: "", "", "", "", and "". Most of the cards in these sets feature silver borders and humorous themes. The silver-bordered cards are not legal for play in WPN-sanctioned tournaments.


title: Carmen

text: Carmen () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences.


title: Carmen

text: Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. "Carmen" has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the "Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias.


title: Carmen

text: The opera is written in the genre of "opéra comique" with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childhood sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmen's love to the glamorous torero Escamillo, after which José kills her in a jealous rage. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality, and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial.


title: Carmen

text: After the premiere, most reviews were critical, and the French public was generally indifferent. "Carmen" initially gained its reputation through a series of productions outside France, and was not revived in Paris until 1883. Thereafter, it rapidly acquired popularity at home and abroad. Later commentators have asserted that "Carmen" forms the bridge between the tradition of "opéra comique" and the realism or "verismo" that characterised late 19th-century Italian opera.


title: Carmen

text: The music of "Carmen" has since been widely acclaimed for brilliance of melody, harmony, atmosphere, and orchestration, and for the skill with which Bizet musically represented the emotions and suffering of his characters. After the composer's death, the score was subject to significant amendment, including the introduction of recitative in place of the original dialogue; there is no standard edition of the opera, and different views exist as to what versions best express Bizet's intentions. The opera has been recorded many times since the first acoustical recording in 1908, and the story has been the subject of many screen and stage adaptations.


title: Carmen

text: In the Paris of the 1860s, despite being a Prix de Rome laureate, Bizet struggled to get his stage works performed. The capital's two main state-funded opera houses—the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique—followed conservative repertoires that restricted opportunities for young native talent. Bizet's professional relationship with Léon Carvalho, manager of the independent Théâtre Lyrique company, enabled him to bring to the stage two full-scale operas, "Les pêcheurs de perles" (1863) and "La jolie fille de Perth" (1867), but neither enjoyed much public success.


title: Carmen

text: When artistic life in Paris resumed after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Bizet found wider opportunities for the performance of his works; his one-act opera "Djamileh" opened at the Opéra-Comique in May 1872. Although this failed and was withdrawn after 11 performances, it led to a further commission from the theatre, this time for a full-length opera for which Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy would provide the libretto. Halévy, who had written the text for Bizet's student opera "Le docteur Miracle" (1856), was a cousin of Bizet's wife, Geneviève; he and Meilhac had a solid reputation as the librettists of many of Jacques Offenbach's operettas.


title: Carmen

text: Bizet was delighted with the Opéra-Comique commission, and expressed to his friend Edmund Galabert his satisfaction in "the absolute certainty of having found my path". The subject of the projected work was a matter of discussion between composer, librettists and the Opéra-Comique management; Adolphe de Leuven, on behalf of the theatre, made several suggestions that were politely rejected. It was Bizet who first proposed an adaptation of Prosper Mérimée's novella "Carmen". Mérimée's story is a blend of travelogue and adventure yarn, possibly inspired by the writer's lengthy travels in Spain in 1830, and had originally been published in 1845 in the journal "Revue des deux Mondes". It may have been influenced in part by Alexander Pushkin's 1824 poem "The Gypsies", a work Mérimée had translated into French; it has also been suggested that the story was developed from an incident told to Mérimée by his friend the Countess Montijo. Bizet may first have encountered the story during his Rome sojourn of 1858–60, since his journals record Mérimée as one of the writers whose works he absorbed in those years.


title: Carmen

text: The orchestration consists of two flutes (doubling piccolo), two oboes (the second doubling cor anglais), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, harp, and strings. The percussion section consists of timpani, side drum, triangle, tambourine, cymbals, castanets, and bass drum. The orchestral complement for the premiere run was 62 or 57 musicians in total (depending on whether the pit trumpet and trombone players doubled off-stage music).


title: Carmen

text: "A square, in Seville. On the right, a door to the tobacco factory. At the back, a bridge. On the left, a guardhouse."


title: Carmen

text: A group of soldiers relax in the square, waiting for the changing of the guard and commenting on the passers-by ("Sur la place, chacun passe"). Micaëla appears, seeking José. Moralès tells her that "José is not yet on duty" and invites her to wait with them. She declines, saying she will return later. José arrives with the new guard, who is greeted and imitated by a crowd of urchins ("Avec la garde montante").


title: Carmen

text: As the factory bell rings, the cigarette girls emerge and exchange banter with young men in the crowd ("La cloche a sonné"). Carmen enters and sings her provocative habanera on the untameable nature of love ("L'amour est un oiseau rebelle"). The men plead with her to choose a lover, and after some teasing she throws a flower to Don José, who thus far has been ignoring her but is now annoyed by her insolence.


title: Carmen

text: As the women go back to the factory, Micaëla returns and gives José a letter and a kiss from his mother ("Parle-moi de ma mère!"). He reads that his mother wants him to return home and marry Micaëla, who retreats in shy embarrassment on learning this. Just as José declares that he is ready to heed his mother's wishes, the women stream from the factory in great agitation. Zuniga, the officer of the guard, learns that Carmen has attacked a woman with a knife. When challenged, Carmen answers with mocking defiance ("Tra la la... Coupe-moi, brûle-moi"); Zuniga orders José to tie her hands while he prepares the prison warrant. Left alone with José, Carmen beguiles him with a seguidilla, in which she sings of a night of dancing and passion with her lover—whoever that may be—in Lillas Pastia's tavern. Confused yet mesmerised, José agrees to free her hands; as she is led away she pushes her escort to the ground and runs off laughing. José is arrested for dereliction of duty.


title: Carmen

text: Two months have passed. Carmen and her friends Frasquita and Mercédès are entertaining Zuniga and other officers ("Les tringles des sistres tintaient") in Pastia's inn. Carmen is delighted to learn of José's release from two months' detention. Outside, a chorus and procession announces the arrival of the toreador Escamillo ("Vivat, vivat le Toréro"). Invited inside, he introduces himself with the "Toreador Song" ("Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre") and sets his sights on Carmen, who brushes him aside. Lillas Pastia hustles the crowds and the soldiers away.


title: Carmen

text: When only Carmen, Frasquita and Mercédès remain, smugglers Dancaïre and Remendado arrive and reveal their plans to dispose of some recently acquired contraband ("Nous avons en tête une affaire"). Frasquita and Mercédès are keen to help them, but Carmen refuses, since she wishes to wait for José. After the smugglers leave, José arrives. Carmen treats him to a private exotic dance ("Je vais danser en votre honneur... La la la"), but her song is joined by a distant bugle call from the barracks. When José says he must return to duty, she mocks him, and he answers by showing her the flower that she threw to him in the square ("La fleur que tu m'avais jetée"). Unconvinced, Carmen demands he show his love by leaving with her. José refuses to desert, but as he prepares to depart, Zuniga enters looking for Carmen. He and José fight. Carmen summons her gypsy comrades, who restrain Zuniga. Having attacked a superior officer, José now has no choice but to join Carmen and the smugglers ("Suis-nous à travers la campagne").


title: Carmen

text: Carmen and José enter with the smugglers and their booty ("Écoute, écoute, compagnons"); Carmen has now become bored with José and tells him scornfully that he should go back to his mother. Frasquita and Mercédès amuse themselves by reading their fortunes from the cards; Carmen joins them and finds that the cards are foretelling her death, and José's. The smugglers depart to transport their goods while the women distract the local customs officers. José is left behind on guard duty.


title: Carmen

text: Micaëla enters with a guide, seeking José and determined to rescue him from Carmen ("Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante"). On hearing a gunshot she hides in fear; it is José, who has fired at an intruder who proves to be Escamillo. José's pleasure at meeting the bullfighter turns to anger when Escamillo declares his infatuation with Carmen. The pair fight ("Je suis Escamillo, toréro de Grenade"), but are interrupted by the returning smugglers and girls ("Holà, holà José"). As Escamillo leaves he invites everyone to his next bullfight in Seville. Micaëla is discovered; at first, José will not leave with her despite Carmen's mockery, but he agrees to go when told that his mother is dying. He departs, vowing he will return. Escamillo is heard in the distance, singing the toreador's song.


title: Carmen

text: Zuniga, Frasquita and Mercédès are among the crowd awaiting the arrival of the bullfighters ("Les voici! Voici la quadrille!"). Escamillo enters with Carmen, and they express their mutual love ("Si tu m'aimes, Carmen"). As Escamillo goes into the arena, Frasquita and Mercédès warn Carmen that José is nearby, but Carmen is unafraid and willing to speak to him. Alone, she is confronted by the desperate José ("C'est toi!", "C'est moi!"). While he pleads vainly for her to return to him, cheers are heard from the arena. As José makes his last entreaty, Carmen contemptuously throws down the ring he gave her and attempts to enter the arena. He then stabs her, and as Escamillo is acclaimed by the crowds, Carmen dies. José kneels and sings "Ah! Carmen! ma Carmen adorée!"; as the crowd exits the arena, José confesses to killing Carmen.


title: Carmen

text: Meilhac and Halévy were a long-standing duo with an established division of labour: Meilhac, who was completely unmusical, wrote the dialogue and Halévy the verses. There is no clear indication of when work began on "Carmen". Bizet and the two librettists were all in Paris during 1873 and easily able to meet; thus there is little written record or correspondence relating to the beginning of the collaboration. The libretto was prepared in accordance with the conventions of "opéra comique", with dialogue separating musical numbers. It deviates from Mérimée's novella in a number of significant respects. In the original, events are spread over a much longer period of time, and much of the main story is narrated by José from his prison cell, as he awaits execution for Carmen's murder. Micaëla does not feature in Mérimée's version, and the Escamillo character is peripheral—a picador named Lucas who is only briefly Carmen's grand passion. Carmen has a husband called Garcia, whom José kills during a quarrel. In the novella, Carmen and José are presented much less sympathetically than they are in the opera; Bizet's biographer Mina Curtiss comments that Mérimée's Carmen, on stage, would have seemed "an unmitigated and unconvincing monster, had her character not been simplified and deepened".


title: Carmen

text: With rehearsals due to begin in October 1873, Bizet began composing in or around January of that year, and by the summer had completed the music for the first act and perhaps sketched more. At that point, according to Bizet's biographer Winton Dean, "some hitch at the Opéra-Comique intervened", and the project was suspended for a while. One reason for the delay may have been the difficulties in finding a singer for the title role. Another was a split that developed between the joint directors of the theatre, Camille du Locle and Adolphe de Leuven, over the advisability of staging the work. De Leuven had vociferously opposed the entire notion of presenting so risqué a story in what he considered a family theatre and was sure audiences would be frightened away. He was assured by Halévy that the story would be toned down, that Carmen's character would be softened, and offset by Micaëla, described by Halévy as "a very innocent, very chaste young girl". Furthermore, the gypsies would be presented as comic characters, and Carmen's death would be overshadowed at the end by "triumphal processions, ballets and joyous fanfares". De Leuven reluctantly agreed, but his continuing hostility towards the project led to his resignation from the theatre early in 1874.


title: Carmen

text: After the various delays, Bizet appears to have resumed work on "Carmen" early in 1874. He completed the draft of the composition—1,200 pages of music—in the summer, which he spent at the artists' colony at Bougival, just outside Paris. He was pleased with the result, informing a friend: "I have written a work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody." During the period of rehearsals, which began in October, Bizet repeatedly altered the music—sometimes at the request of the orchestra who found some of it impossible to perform, sometimes to meet the demands of individual singers, and otherwise in response to the demands of the theatre's management. The vocal score that Bizet published in March 1875 shows significant changes from the version of the score he sold the publishers, , in January 1875; the conducting score used at the premiere differs from each of these documents. There is no definitive edition, and there are differences among musicologists about which version represents the composer's true intentions. Bizet also changed the libretto, reordering sequences and imposing his own verses where he felt the librettists had strayed too far from the character of Mérimée's original. Among other changes, he provided new words for Carmen's "Habanera", and rewrote the text of Carmen's solo in the act 3 card scene. He also provided a new opening line for the "Seguidilla" in act 1.


title: Carmen

text: Most of the characters in "Carmen"—the soldiers, the smugglers, the Gypsy women and the secondary leads Micaëla and Escamillo—are reasonably familiar types within the "opéra comique" tradition, although drawing them from proletarian life was unusual. The two principals, José and Carmen, lie outside the genre. While each is presented quite differently from Mérimée's portrayals of a murderous brigand and a treacherous, amoral schemer, even in their relatively sanitised forms neither corresponds to the norms of "opéra comique". They are more akin to the "verismo" style that would find fuller expression in the works of Puccini.


title: Carmen

text: Dean considers that José is the central figure of the opera: "It is his fate rather than Carmen's that interests us." The music characterises his gradual decline, act by act, from honest soldier to deserter, vagabond and finally murderer. In act 1 he is a simple countryman aligned musically with Micaëla; in act 2 he evinces a greater toughness, the result of his experiences as a prisoner, but it is clear that by the end of the act his infatuation with Carmen has driven his emotions beyond control. Dean describes him in act 3 as a trapped animal who refuses to leave his cage even when the door is opened for him, ravaged by a mix of conscience, jealousy and despair. In the final act his music assumes a grimness and purposefulness that reflects his new fatalism: "He will make one more appeal; if Carmen refuses, he knows what to do."


title: Carmen

text: Carmen herself, says Dean, is a new type of operatic heroine representing a new kind of love, not the innocent kind associated with the "spotless soprano" school, but something altogether more vital and dangerous. Her capriciousness, fearlessness and love of freedom are all musically represented: "She is redeemed from any suspicion of vulgarity by her qualities of courage and fatalism so vividly realised in the music". Curtiss suggests that Carmen's character, spiritually and musically, may be a realisation of the composer's own unconscious longing for a freedom denied to him by his stifling marriage. Harold C. Schonberg likens Carmen to "a female Don Giovanni. She would rather die than be false to herself." The dramatic personality of the character, and the range of moods she is required to express, call for exceptional acting and singing talents. This has deterred some of opera's most distinguished exponents; Maria Callas, though she recorded the part, never performed it on stage. The musicologist Hugh Macdonald observes that "French opera never produced another "femme" as "fatale" as Carmen", though she may have influenced some of Massenet's heroines. Macdonald suggests that outside the French repertoire, Richard Strauss's Salome and Alban Berg's Lulu "may be seen as distant degenerate descendants of Bizet's temptress".


title: Carmen

text: Bizet was reportedly contemptuous of the music he wrote for Escamillo: "Well, they asked for ordure, and they've got it", he is said to have remarked about the toreador's song—but, as Dean comments, "the triteness lies in the character, not in the music". Micaëla's music has been criticised for its "Gounodesque" elements, although Dean maintains that her music has greater vitality than that of any of Gounod's own heroines.


title: Carmen

text: The search for a singer-actress to play Carmen began in the summer of 1873. Press speculation favoured Zulma Bouffar, who was perhaps the librettists' preferred choice. She had sung leading roles in many of Offenbach's operas, but she was unacceptable to Bizet and was turned down by du Locle as unsuitable. In September an approach was made to Marie Roze, well known for previous triumphs at the Opéra-Comique, the Opéra and in London. She refused the part when she learned that she would be required to die on stage. The role was then offered to Célestine Galli-Marié, who agreed to terms with du Locle after several months' negotiation. Galli-Marié, a demanding and at times tempestuous performer, would prove a staunch ally of Bizet, often supporting his resistance to demands from the management that the work should be toned down. At the time it was generally believed that she and the composer were conducting a love affair during the months of rehearsal.


title: Carmen

text: The leading tenor part of Don José was given to Paul Lhérie, a rising star of the Opéra-Comique who had recently appeared in works by Massenet and Delibes. He would later become a baritone, and in 1887 sang the role of Zurga in the Covent Garden premiere of "Les pêcheurs de perles". Jacques Bouhy, engaged to sing Escamillo, was a young Belgian-born baritone who had already appeared in demanding roles such as Méphistophélès in Gounod's "Faust" and as Mozart's Figaro. Marguerite Chapuy, who sang Micaëla, was at the beginning of a short career in which she was briefly a star at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; the impresario James H. Mapleson thought her "one of the most charming vocalists it has been my pleasure to know". However, she married and left the stage altogether in 1876, refusing Mapleson's considerable cash inducements to return.


title: Carmen

text: Because rehearsals did not start until October 1874 and lasted longer than anticipated, the premiere was delayed. The final rehearsals went well, and in a generally optimistic mood the first night was fixed for 3 March 1875, the day on which, coincidentally, Bizet's appointment as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour was formally announced. The premiere, which was conducted by Adolphe Deloffre, was attended by many of Paris's leading musical figures, including Massenet, Offenbach, Delibes and Gounod; during the performance the last-named was overheard complaining bitterly that Bizet had stolen the music of Micaëla's act 3 aria from him: "That melody is mine!" Halévy recorded his impressions of the premiere in a letter to a friend; the first act was evidently well received, with applause for the main numbers and numerous curtain calls. The first part of act 2 also went well, but after the toreador's song there was, Halévy noted, "coldness". In act 3 only Micaëla's aria earned applause as the audience became increasingly disconcerted. The final act was "glacial from first to last", and Bizet was left "only with the consolations of a few friends". The critic Ernest Newman wrote later that the sentimentalist Opéra-Comique audience was "shocked by the drastic realism of the action" and by the low standing and defective morality of most of the characters. According to the composer Benjamin Godard, Bizet retorted, in response to a compliment, "Don't you see that all these bourgeois have not understood a wretched word of the work I have written for them?" In a different vein, shortly after the work had concluded, Massenet sent Bizet a congratulatory note: "How happy you must be at this time—it's a great success!"


title: Carmen

text: The general tone of the next day's press reviews ranged from disappointment to outrage. The more conservative critics complained about "Wagnerism" and the subordination of the voice to the noise of the orchestra. There was consternation that the heroine was an amoral seductress rather than a woman of virtue; Galli-Marié's interpretation of the role was described by one critic as "the very incarnation of vice". Others compared the work unfavourably with the traditional Opéra-Comique repertoire of Auber and Boieldieu. Léon Escudier in "L'Art Musical" called "Carmen"s music "dull and obscure... the ear grows weary of waiting for the cadence that never comes." It seemed that Bizet had generally failed to fulfill expectations, both of those who (given Halévy's and Meilhac's past associations) had expected something in the Offenbach mould, and of critics such as Adolphe Jullien who had anticipated a Wagnerian music drama. Among the few supportive critics was the poet Théodore de Banville; writing in "Le National", he applauded Bizet for presenting a drama with real men and women instead of the usual Opéra-Comique "puppets".


title: Carmen

text: In its initial run at the Opéra-Comique, "Carmen" provoked little public enthusiasm; it shared the theatre for a while with Verdi's much more popular "Requiem". "Carmen" was often performed to half-empty houses, even when the management gave away large numbers of tickets. Early on 3 June, the day after the opera's 33rd performance, Bizet died suddenly of heart disease, at the age of 36. It was his wedding anniversary. That night's performance was cancelled; the tragic circumstances brought a temporary increase in public interest during the brief period before the season ended. Du Locle brought "Carmen" back in November 1875, with the original cast, and it ran for a further 12 performances until 15 February 1876 to give a year's total for the original production of 48. Among those who attended one of these later performances was Tchaikovsky, who wrote to his benefactor, Nadezhda von Meck: ""Carmen" is a masterpiece in every sense of the word... one of those rare creations which expresses the efforts of a whole musical epoch." After the final performance, "Carmen" was not seen in Paris again until 1883.


title: Carmen

text: Shortly before his death Bizet signed a contract for a production of "Carmen" by the Vienna Court Opera. For this version, first staged on 23 October 1875, Bizet's friend Ernest Guiraud replaced the original dialogue with recitatives, to create a "grand opera" format. Guiraud also reorchestrated music from Bizet's "L'Arlésienne suite" to provide a spectacular ballet for "Carmen"s second act. Shortly before the initial Vienna performance, the Court Opera's director Franz von Jauner decided to use parts of the original dialogue along with some of Guiraud's recitatives; this hybrid and the full recitative version became the norms for productions of the opera outside France for most of the next century.


title: Carmen

text: Despite its deviations from Bizet's original format, and some critical reservations, the 1875 Vienna production was a great success with the city's public. It also won praise from both Wagner and Brahms. The latter reportedly saw the opera twenty times, and said he would have "gone to the ends of the earth to embrace Bizet". The Viennese triumph began the opera's rapid ascent towards worldwide fame. In February 1876 it began a run in Brussels at La Monnaie; it returned there the following year, with Galli-Marié in the title role, and thereafter became a permanent fixture in the Brussels repertory. On 17 June 1878 "Carmen" was produced in London, at Her Majesty's Theatre, where Minnie Hauk began her long association with the part of Carmen. A parallel London production at Covent Garden, with Adelina Patti, was cancelled when Patti withdrew. The successful Her Majesty's production, sung in Italian, had an equally enthusiastic reception in Dublin. On 23 October 1878 the opera received its American premiere, at the New York Academy of Music, and in the same year was introduced to Saint Petersburg.


title: Carmen

text: In the following five years performances were given in numerous American and European cities. The opera found particular favour in Germany, where the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, apparently saw it on 27 different occasions and where Friedrich Nietzsche opined that he "became a better man when Bizet speaks to me". "Carmen" was also acclaimed in numerous French provincial cities including Marseille, Lyon and, in 1881, Dieppe, where Galli-Marié returned to the role. In August 1881 the singer wrote to Bizet's widow to report that "Carmen"s Spanish premiere, in Barcelona, had been "another great success". But Carvalho, who had assumed the management of the Opéra-Comique, thought the work immoral and refused to reinstate it. Meilhac and Hálevy were more prepared to countenance a revival, provided that Galli-Marié had no part in it; they blamed her interpretation for the relative failure of the opening run.


title: Carmen

text: In April 1883 Carvalho finally revived "Carmen" at the Opéra-Comique, with Adèle Isaac featuring in an under-rehearsed production that removed some of the controversial aspects of the original. Carvalho was roundly condemned by the critics for offering a travesty of what had come to be regarded as a masterpiece of French opera; nevertheless, this version was acclaimed by the public and played to full houses. In October Carvalho yielded to pressure and revised the production; he brought back Galli-Marié, and restored the score and libretto to their 1875 forms.


title: Carmen

text: On 9 January 1884, "Carmen" was given its first New York Metropolitan Opera performance, to a mixed critical reception. "The New York Times" welcomed Bizet's "pretty and effective work", but compared Zelia Trebelli's interpretation of the title role unfavourably with that of Minnie Hauk. Thereafter "Carmen" was quickly incorporated into the Met's regular repertory. In February 1906 Enrico Caruso sang José at the Met for the first time; he continued to perform in this role until 1919, two years before his death. On 17 April 1906, on tour with the Met, he sang the role at the Grand Opera House in San Francisco. Afterwards he sat up until 3 am reading the reviews in the early editions of the following day's papers. Two hours later he was awakened by the first violent shocks of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, after which he and his fellow performers made a hurried escape from the Palace Hotel.


title: Carmen

text: The popularity of "Carmen" continued through succeeding generations of American opera-goers; by the beginning of 2011 the Met alone had performed it almost a thousand times. It enjoyed similar success in other American cities and in all parts of the world, in many different languages. Carmen's habanera from act 1, and the toreador's song "Votre toast" from act 2, are among the most popular and best-known of all operatic arias, the latter "a splendid piece of swagger" according to Newman, "against which the voices and the eyebrows of purists have long been raised in vain". Most of the productions outside France followed the example created in Vienna and incorporated lavish ballet interludes and other spectacles, a practice which Mahler abandoned in Vienna when he revived the work there in 1900. In 1919, Bizet's aged contemporary Camille Saint-Saëns was still complaining about the "strange idea" of adding a ballet, which he considered "a hideous blemish in that masterpiece", and he wondered why Bizet's wife had permitted it.


title: Carmen

text: At the Opéra-Comique, after its 1883 revival, "Carmen" was always presented in the dialogue version with minimal musical embellishments. By 1888, the year of the 50th anniversary of Bizet's birth, the opera had been performed there 330 times; by 1938, his centenary year, the total of performances at the theatre had reached 2,271. However, outside France the practice of using recitatives remained the norm for many years; the Carl Rosa Opera Company's 1947 London production, and Walter Felsenstein's 1949 staging at the Berlin Komische Oper, are among the first known instances in which the dialogue version was used other than in France. Neither of these innovations led to much change in practice; a similar experiment was tried at Covent Garden in 1953 but hurriedly withdrawn, and the first American production with spoken dialogue, in Colorado in 1953, met with a similar fate.


title: Carmen

text: Dean has commented on the dramatic distortions that arise from the suppression of the dialogue; the effect, he says, is that the action moves forward "in a series of jerks, rather instead of by smooth transition", and that most of the minor characters are substantially diminished. Only late in the 20th century did dialogue versions become common in opera houses outside France, but there is still no universally recognised full score. Fritz Oeser's 1964 edition is an attempt to fill this gap, but in Dean's view is unsatisfactory. Oeser reintroduces material removed by Bizet during the first rehearsals, and ignores many of the late changes and improvements that the composer made immediately before the first performance; he thus, according to Susan McClary, "inadvertently preserves as definitive an early draft of the opera". In the early 21st century new editions were prepared by Robert Didion and Richard Langham-Smith, published by Schott and Peters respectively. Each departs significantly from Bizet's vocal score of March 1875, published during his lifetime after he had personally corrected the proofs; Dean believes this vocal score should be the basis of any standard edition. Lesley Wright, a contemporary Bizet scholar, remarks that, unlike his compatriots Rameau and Debussy, Bizet has not been accorded a critical edition of his principal works; should this transpire, she says, "we might expect yet another scholar to attempt to refine the details of this vibrant score which has so fascinated the public and performers for more than a century." Meanwhile, "Carmen"s popularity endures; according to Macdonald: "The memorability of Bizet's tunes will keep the music of Carmen alive in perpetuity," and its status as a popular classic is unchallenged by any other French opera.


title: Carmen

text: Hervé Lacombe, in his survey of 19th-century French opera, contends that "Carmen" is one of the few works from that large repertory to have stood the test of time. While he places the opera firmly within the long "opéra comique" tradition, Macdonald considers that it transcends the genre and that its immortality is assured by "the combination in abundance of striking melody, deft harmony and perfectly judged orchestration". Dean sees Bizet's principal achievement in the demonstration of the main actions of the opera in the music, rather than in the dialogue, writing that "Few artists have expressed so vividly the torments inflicted by sexual passions and jealousy." Dean places Bizet's realism in a different category from the "verismo" of Puccini and others; he likens the composer to Mozart and Verdi in his ability to engage his audiences with the emotions and sufferings of his characters.


title: Carmen

text: Bizet, who had never visited Spain, sought out appropriate ethnic material to provide an authentic Spanish flavour to his music. Carmen's habanera is based on an idiomatic song, "El Arreglito", by the Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier (1809–65). Bizet had taken this to be a genuine folk melody; when he learned its recent origin he added a note to the vocal score, crediting Yradier. He used a genuine folksong as the source of Carmen's defiant "Coupe-moi, brûle-moi" while other parts of the score, notably the "Seguidilla", utilise the rhythms and instrumentation associated with flamenco music. However, Dean insists that "[t]his is a French, not a Spanish opera"; the "foreign bodies", while they undoubtedly contribute to the unique atmosphere of the opera, form only a small ingredient of the complete music.


title: Carmen

text: The prelude to act 1 combines three recurrent themes: the entry of the bullfighters from act 4, the refrain from the Toreador Song from act 2, and the motif that, in two slightly differing forms, represents both Carmen herself and the fate she personifies. This motif, played on clarinet, bassoon, cornet and cellos over tremolo strings, concludes the prelude with an abrupt crescendo. When the curtain rises a light and sunny atmosphere is soon established, and pervades the opening scenes. The mock solemnities of the changing of the guard, and the flirtatious exchanges between the townsfolk and the factory girls, precede a mood change when a brief phrase from the fate motif announces Carmen's entrance. After her provocative habanera, with its persistent insidious rhythm and changes of key, the fate motif sounds in full when Carmen throws her flower to José before departing. This action elicits from José a passionate A major solo which Dean suggests is the turning-point in his musical characterisation. The softer vein returns briefly, as Micaëla reappears and joins with José in a duet to a warm clarinet and strings accompaniment. The tranquillity is shattered by the women's noisy quarrel, Carmen's dramatic re-entry and her defiant interaction with Zuniga. After her beguiling "Seguidilla" provokes José to an exasperated high A sharp shout, Carmen's escape is preceded by the brief but disconcerting reprise of a fragment from the habanera. Bizet revised this finale several times to increase its dramatic effect.


title: Carmen

text: Act 2 begins with a short prelude, based on a melody that José will sing offstage before his next entry. A festive scene in the inn precedes Escamillo's tumultuous entrance, in which brass and percussion provide prominent backing while the crowd sings along. The quintet that follows is described by Newman as "of incomparable verve and musical wit". José's appearance precipitates a long mutual wooing scene; Carmen sings, dances and plays the castanets; a distant cornet-call summoning José to duty is blended with Carmen's melody so as to be barely discernible. A muted reference to the fate motif on an English horn leads to José's "Flower Song", a flowing continuous melody that ends "pianissimo" on a sustained high B-flat. José's insistence that, despite Carmen's blandishments, he must return to duty leads to a quarrel; the arrival of Zuniga, the consequent fight and José's unavoidable ensnarement into the lawless life culminates musically in the triumphant hymn to freedom that closes the act.


title: Carmen

text: The prelude to act 3 was originally intended for Bizet's "L'Arlésienne" score. Newman describes it as "an exquisite miniature, with much dialoguing and intertwining between the woodwind instruments". As the action unfolds, the tension between Carmen and José is evident in the music. In the card scene, the lively duet for Frasquita and Mercédès turns ominous when Carmen intervenes; the fate motif underlines her premonition of death. Micaëla's aria, after her entry in search of José, is a conventional piece, though of deep feeling, preceded and concluded by horn calls. The middle part of the act is occupied by Escamillo and José, now acknowledged as rivals for Carmen's favour. The music reflects their contrasting attitudes: Escamillo remains, says Newman, "invincibly polite and ironic", while José is sullen and aggressive. When Micaëla pleads with José to go with her to his mother, the harshness of Carmen's music reveals her most unsympathetic side. As José departs, vowing to return, the fate theme is heard briefly in the woodwind. The confident, off-stage sound of the departing Escamillo singing the toreador's refrain provides a distinct contrast to José's increasing desperation.


title: Carmen

text: The final act is prefaced with a lively orchestral piece derived from Manuel García's short operetta "El Criado Fingido". After the opening crowd scene, the bullfighters' march is led by the children's chorus; the crowd hails Escamillo before his short love scene with Carmen. The long finale, in which José makes his last pleas to Carmen and is decisively rejected, is punctuated at critical moments by enthusiastic off-stage shouts from the bullfighting arena. As José kills Carmen, the chorus sing the refrain of the Toreador Song off-stage; the fate motif, which has been suggestively present at various points during the act, is heard fortissimo, together with a brief reference to Carmen's card scene music. Jose's last words of love and despair are followed by a final long chord, on which the curtain falls without further musical or vocal comment.


title: Carmen

text: Numbers are from the vocal score (English version) printed by G. Schirmer Inc., New York, 1958 from Guiraud's 1875 arrangement.


title: Carmen

text: "Carmen" has been the subject of many recordings, beginning with early wax cylinder recordings of excerpts in the 1890s, a nearly complete performance in German from 1908 with Emmy Destinn in the title role, and a complete 1911 Opéra-Comique recording in French. Since then, many of the leading opera houses and artistes have recorded the work, in both studio and live performances. Over the years many versions have been commended and reissued. From the mid-1990s numerous video recordings have become available. These include David McVicar's Glyndebourne production of 2002, and the Royal Opera productions of 2007 and 2010, each designed by Francesca Zambello.


title: Carmen

text: In 1883, the Spanish violinist and composer Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908) wrote a "Carmen Fantasy" for violin, described as "ingenious and technically difficult". Ferruccio Busoni's 1920 piece, Piano Sonatina No. 6 (Fantasia da camera super Carmen), is based on themes from "Carmen". In 1967, the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin adapted parts of the "Carmen" music into a ballet, the "Carmen Suite", written for his wife Maya Plisetskaya, then the Bolshoi Ballet's principal ballerina.


title: Carmen

text: In 1983 the stage director Peter Brook produced an adaptation of Bizet's opera known as "La Tragedie de Carmen" in collaboration with the writer Jean-Claude Carrière and the composer Marius Constant. This 90-minute version focused on four main characters, eliminating choruses and the major arias were reworked for chamber orchestra. Brook first produced it in Paris, and it has since been performed in many cities.


title: Carmen

text: The character "Carmen" has been a regular subject of film treatment since the earliest days of cinema. The films were made in various languages and interpreted by several cultures, and have been created by prominent directors including , Raoul Walsh (1915) with Theda Bara, Cecil B. DeMille (1915), and "The Loves of Carmen" (1948) with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, directed by Charles Vidor. Otto Preminger's 1954 "Carmen Jones", with an all-black cast, is based on the 1943 Oscar Hammerstein Broadway musical of the same name, an adaptation of the opera transposed to 1940s North Carolina extending to Chicago. "The Wild, Wild Rose" is a 1960 Hong Kong film which adapts the plot and main character to the setting of a Wanchai nightclub, including striking renditions of some of the most famous songs by Grace Chang. Other adaptions include Carlos Saura (1983) (who made a flamenco-based dance film with two levels of story telling), Peter Brook (1983) (filming his compressed "La Tragédie de Carmen") and Jean-Luc Godard (1984). Francesco Rosi's film of 1984, with Julia Migenes and Plácido Domingo, is generally faithful to the original story and to Bizet's music. "Carmen on Ice" (1990), starring Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano and Brian Orser, was inspired by Witt's gold medal-winning performance during the 1988 Winter Olympics. Robert Townsend's 2001 film, "", starring Beyoncé Knowles, is a more recent attempt to create an African-American version. "Carmen" was interpreted in modern ballet by the South African dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo in 2010.


title: Binary number

text: A binary number is a number expressed in the base-2 numeral system or binary numeral system, a method of mathematical expression which uses only two symbols: typically "0" (zero) and "1" (one).


title: Binary number

text: The base-2 numeral system is a positional notation with a radix of 2. Each digit is referred to as a bit, or binary digit. Because of its straightforward implementation in digital electronic circuitry using logic gates, the binary system is used by almost all modern computers and computer-based devices, as a preferred system of use, over various other human techniques of communication, because of the simplicity of the language and the noise immunity in physical implementation.


title: Binary number

text: The modern binary number system was studied in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries by Thomas Harriot, Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, and Gottfried Leibniz. However, systems related to binary numbers have appeared earlier in multiple cultures including ancient Egypt, China, and India. Leibniz was specifically inspired by the Chinese "I Ching".


title: Binary number

text: The scribes of ancient Egypt used two different systems for their fractions, Egyptian fractions (not related to the binary number system) and Horus-Eye fractions (so called because many historians of mathematics believe that the symbols used for this system could be arranged to form the eye of Horus, although this has been disputed). Horus-Eye fractions are a binary numbering system for fractional quantities of grain, liquids, or other measures, in which a fraction of a hekat is expressed as a sum of the binary fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64. Early forms of this system can be found in documents from the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, approximately 2400 BC, and its fully developed hieroglyphic form dates to the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, approximately 1200 BC.


title: Binary number

text: The method used for ancient Egyptian multiplication is also closely related to binary numbers. In this method, multiplying one number by a second is performed by a sequence of steps in which a value (initially the first of the two numbers) is either doubled or has the first number added back into it; the order in which these steps are to be performed is given by the binary representation of the second number. This method can be seen in use, for instance, in the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, which dates to around 1650 BC.


title: Binary number

text: The "I Ching" dates from the 9th century BC in China. The binary notation in the "I Ching" is used to interpret its quaternary divination technique.


title: Binary number

text: It is based on taoistic duality of yin and yang. Eight trigrams (Bagua) and a set of 64 hexagrams ("sixty-four" gua), analogous to the three-bit and six-bit binary numerals, were in use at least as early as the Zhou Dynasty of ancient China.


title: Binary number

text: The Song Dynasty scholar Shao Yong (1011–1077) rearranged the hexagrams in a format that resembles modern binary numbers, although he did not intend his arrangement to be used mathematically. Viewing the least significant bit on top of single hexagrams in Shao Yong's square


title: Binary number

text: and reading along rows either from bottom right to top left with solid lines as 0 and broken lines as 1 or from top left to bottom right with solid lines as 1 and broken lines as 0 hexagrams can be interpreted as sequence from 0 to 63.


title: Binary number

text: The Indian scholar Pingala (c. 2nd century BC) developed a binary system for describing prosody. He used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code. They were known as "laghu" (light) and "guru" (heavy) syllables.


title: Binary number

text: Pingala's Hindu classic titled Chandaḥśāstra (8.23) describes the formation of a matrix in order to give a unique value to each meter. "Chandaḥśāstra" literally translates to "science of meters" in Sanskrit. The binary representations in Pingala's system increases towards the right, and not to the left like in the binary numbers of the modern positional notation. In Pingala's system, the numbers start from number one, and not zero. Four short syllables "0000" is the first pattern and corresponds to the value one. The numerical value is obtained by adding one to the sum of place values.


title: Binary number

text: The residents of the island of Mangareva in French Polynesia were using a hybrid binary-decimal system before 1450. Slit drums with binary tones are used to encode messages across Africa and Asia.


title: Binary number

text: Sets of binary combinations similar to the "I Ching" have also been used in traditional African divination systems such as Ifá as well as in medieval Western geomancy.


title: Binary number

text: In the late 13th century Ramon Llull had the ambition to account for all wisdom in every branch of human knowledge of the time. For that purpose he developed a general method or 'Ars generalis' based on binary combinations of a number of simple basic principles or categories, for which he has been considered a predecessor of computing science and artificial intelligence.


title: Binary number

text: In 1605 Francis Bacon discussed a system whereby letters of the alphabet could be reduced to sequences of binary digits, which could then be encoded as scarcely visible variations in the font in any random text. Importantly for the general theory of binary encoding, he added that this method could be used with any objects at all: "provided those objects be capable of a twofold difference only; as by Bells, by Trumpets, by Lights and Torches, by the report of Muskets, and any instruments of like nature". (See Bacon's cipher.)