page_title: Carmen
section_title: Adaptations
hierarchical_section_title: Carmen / Adaptations
caption_attribution_description: English: Mlle Victoria Lepanto in Carmen (Pathe 1909)
context_page_description: Carmen is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a eponymous novella 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 scandalized its first audiences.
  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.
  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.
context_section_description: 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.
  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.
  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 Gerolamo Lo Savio (1909), 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. 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, Carmen: A Hip Hopera, 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.
caption: Vittoria Lepanto [it] in Carmen (1909)
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