Carmen 3D: RealD Opera Movie, Characters, Plot Synopsis & Summary ACT I A square in Seville outside a cigarette factory and barracks, around 1820 A squadron of soldiers is stationed outside the cigarette factory. The working girls come out for a break and the men go crazy for the dazzling Carmen. She teases them, tossing a flower to the standoffish corporal, Don José, who appears to ignore it. Don José meets with Micaëla, a girl from his village. She gives him a letter from his mother. Don José expresses his intention to marry Micaëla, as his mother wishes. Carmen gets into a fight with another woman and is arrested. She seduces Don José into helping her escape. For his trouble he gets thrown in prison. ACT II A tavern in Seville, haunt of gypsies and brigands, some months later Carmen and her gypsy friends are dancing when champion bullfighter, Escamillo, arrives. He is attracted to Carmen, but she spurns his advances. Carmen’s friends urge her to join them in a new smuggling venture. When she refuses, saying she is in love, they suggest she brings her lover with her.

Don José arrives, just out of prison and Carmen dances for him. A bugle calls Don José to return to his barracks. Carmen is furious and demands that Don José desert the army. José’s officer appears ordering him back to barracks. Carmen’s smuggling friends kidnap Zuniga, and Don José agrees to join them and leave his old life. ACT III A bandits’ camp in the mountains Carmen has wearied of Don José. Frasquita, Mercédès and Carmen read the cards, which predict Carmen’s death. The bandits go off on a mission and José is left alone at the camp. Escamillo the bullfighter, appears, looking for Carmen. He and José fight. Don José is only stopped from stabbing Escamillo by the arrival of Carmen. Escamillo thanks Carmen, and invites the smugglers to his next bullfight. Micaëla arrives. She has followed Don José to the mountains to tell him that his mother is dying. Don José agrees to leave with Micaëla but promises Carmen that he will return. ACT IV Outside the bullring in Seville Carmen appears with Escamillo as he parades before the bullfight and they exchange vows of love.

As Escamillo leaves to begin the bull fight, Don José appears and begs Carmen to run away with him. She refuses, declaring that she no longer loves him. Offstage, the jubilant crowd cheers Escamillo as he kills a bull. Carmen declares her love for Escamillo and tries to break free from Don José. As the bull dies in the ring, José stabs Carmen, who falls dead in his arms. The Story of Bizet's Opera, Carmen (Synopsis) Zuniga (bass) The Story of Carmen, Act I In a town square in Seville, soldiers and townspeople are gathered chatting and moving about, when a young peasant girl name Micaela questions the soldiers about her love, Don Jose. The soldiers try to persuade the young girl to stay with them until Don Jose returns, but she declines and leaves. Soon, Don Jose arrives moments before the cigarette factory bell rings and a group of women, including the beautiful gypsy, Carmen, exit the building. The soldiers flirt with the girls and asks Carmen when when she will love them.

continue reading below our video Celebrity Breakups of 2015 We Didn't See Coming Her reply is given in the famous aria, "L'amour est un oiseau rebella" a.k.a. the Habanera. (Can't understand French? Read the Habanera lyrics and translation ). ( Watch a video of the Habanera .) Learn more about the creation of the Habanera in this Habanera Profile . When Carmen sees Don Jose she tosses a flower in front of him in order to seduce him. Don Jose picks up the flower and becomes enchanted by the beautiful Carmen. Shortly thereafter, Micaela returns with a letter and a kiss sent to Don Jose by his mother. In the letter, Don Jose's mother has asked him to marry Micaela. Don Jose promises his fidelity and love to Micaela. Moments later, a fight breaks out at the cigarette factory between Carmen and another woman. Carmen injures the woman before she is captured by Officer Zuniga. Zuniga commands Don Jose to escort Carmen to prison. However, Carmen charms Don Jose into letting her escape. When Don Jose is discovered for letting Carmen escape, he is thrown into jail for one month's time.

The Story of Carmen, Act II At Lilas Pastia's Inn, Carmen and her friends, Mercedes and Frasquita, are socializing with several soldiers including Officer Zuniga, when the victorious bullfighter, Escamillo, arrives with a celebrating entourage. During the Toreador song, "Votre toast, je peux vos le rendre", Escamilo attempts to capture Carmen's heart. ( Watch a video of "Votre toast" (Toreador Song). ) Learn the Toreador Song lyrics and text translation . However, his attempts are unsuccessful, as are Officer Zuniga's, who tells Carmen that he will return to the inn later to meet with her - Carmen's heart waits for Don Jose's release from prison. A while later, once the crowd has dispersed, the smugglers Dancairo and Remendado ask for help from Carmen and her two friends. Mercedes and Frasquita agree to help, but Carmen refuses as she knows that Don Jose will be released from prison that day and meet her at the inn. When he finally arrives, Carmen dances for him. Her dance is cut short when a bugle sounds in the distance, signaling Don Jose to return home.

Carmen mocks his obedience and tries to persuade him to remain with her and live the gypsy life. Don Jose does not give in until Zuniga arrives at the inn searching for Carmen. Zuniga orders Don Jose to leave, but in a fit of jealousy, he defies his commanders orders. Dancairo and Remendado tackle Zuniga and take him away from the inn. After all of this, Don Jose, feeling as if he has no other choice, stays at the inn with Carmen. The Story of Carmen, Act III Don Jose, now at the smuggler's hideout in the mountains, begins to reminisce about his former home and his mother and starts missing them dearly. Carmen, who has decided she no longer loves him, takes notice and starts taunting him to leave, but he does not. Mercedes and Frasquita tell their fortunes with a deck of cards. For the two girls, the cards reveal a life of wealth, love, and luxury. For Carmen and Don Jose, it reveals death. After discussing their plains, the smugglers and the girls leave, while Don Jose watches over the hideout.

Soon, Micaela, assisted by a guide, comes to the mountain hideout and hides behind a mound of rocks when she hears a gunshot fired by Escamillo. Escamillo enters the hideout and begins telling Don Jose about his crush on Carmen. He also tells Don Jose about Carmen's relationship with a soldier, not knowing the story is about Don Jose. Don Jose becomes very angry and starts fighting Escamillo. The smugglers return before the fight gets worse. Escamillo invites Carmen and the others to his upcoming bullfight as he leaves the hideout. Micaela finally emerges from her hiding spot, and tries to convince Don Jose to return home during the aria "Je dis, que rien ne m'épouvante". (Watch a video of "Je dis".) After several unsuccessful attempts, she finally persuades him to leave by telling him his beloved mother is dying. Don Jose promises his return to Carmen and leaves with Micaela. In the distance, Escamillo can be heard singing, and Carmen begins heading in that direction. The Story of Carmen, Act IV During the procession of the toreadors, Carmen and Escamillo are seen arriving together.

Mercedes and Frasquita warn Carmen that Don Jose is lurking around the crowd plotting to kill her. She tells them that she will speak to him to resolve the matter once and for all. While Escamillo enters the bullfighting ring, a desperate Don Jose meets Carmen outside the arena. He tells her she must commit her love and fidelity to him. She explains that she no longer loves him and throws the ring he gave her on the ground. Now completely mad, Don Jose stabs Carmen in the heart with a dagger. She dies simultaneously with Escamillo's bullfighting victory. When the arena empties, Don Jose confesses his crime to the crowd. (Watch a video of the final scene from Carmen.) The Music of Carmen Georges Bizet worked in opera theatres during much of his career, mostly as a rehearsal pianist. And prior to the composition of Carmen, he wrote some truly charming music, some salon music, a little symphonic music, and some incidental music for the theatre. He also wrote some operas, many of which were stillborn at birth, others of which remained incomplete. None of these works gives us any inkling of the volcanic explosion of ideas that is the score of the four-act Carmen.

The choice of subject is in itself quite telling. In setting the potentially scandalous novella by Prosper Mérimée to music for the staid, family-friendly Opéra Comique, he was thumbing his nose at the social class that supported the very art within which he tried to make his living. So rabidly counter to the traditional fare of audiences that traveled to the Salle Favart was this opera, it couldn’t have been a mistake or a miscalculation. This was virtual artistic suicide, premeditated and fully committed. The music provoked rebellion amongst the orchestral players and chorus members, ignited a furor in the administration of the opera house resulting in the resignation of one of its directors, and scandalized a perplexed audience. The composer died feeling that the work was a complete failure, a tragic irony heightened by the fact that within months of his demise the work was well on its way to being hailed as one of the greatest operas ever written. Surely one reason for the shock felt by the Carmen’s first audiences is the sheer intimacy of the Salle Favart, then a medium-sized theatre (at least by American standards) of fewer than 2,000 seats with a ‘live’ acoustic.

In such close quarters the explosive energy of the overture, the sultry nature of Carmen’s seduction of Don Jose, and the violence of her murder at the climax of the opera must have stunned the polite bourgeois Parisian audience. (Even today, in the third theatre to accommodate the Comique, the capacity is relatively small at 1,500). The shock value has certainly been overcome with time and endless production of the opera throughout the world, but the essential theatrical effect remains: Carmen is an opera that brilliantly interconnects plot and subplot with music that communicates an amazing array of the emotions and psychological states of the characters. And it does this at times subtly, and at other times with the blatancy of a velvet-covered hammer. The opera is brilliantly orchestrated, of course, the composer taking advantage of every timbre at his disposal. The use of the wind instruments to add flashes of color and the brass to add a burnished quality to the bullfighting references brings the story to memorable life. Cymbals, tambourines and castanets add to the Spanish, martial flavor of many important passages.

In many ways, it is a typical mid-19th century French orchestration, not dissimilar to the scores of Offenbach and early Massenet. But it is Bizet’s treatment of the orchestra as an equal member of the operatic ‘team’ that is striking in the context of 1875. Why? Because the orchestra seems to always have the role of playing ‘below the surface’. Note how practically every solo moment for the character Carmen is accompanied by a dance rhythm, with the notable exception of the Act III ‘card’ aria, “En vain pour éviter les réponses amères”. The habanera, the seguidilla, the castanet-accompanied Spanish song in the duet with Jose, the gypsy song at the beginning of Act II all conspire to give us a total picture of this person. The dances identify her as a free spirit, a lover, an actor, above all a woman who follows her senses beyond all else and who will never be contained by societal, religious or moral strictures.

The music therefore communicates the essence of Carmen, just as the pretty, elegant lines of Micaëla’s music projects her maidenly, village girl persona and the lusty lilt of Escamillo’s Toreador Song portrays his dionysiac, erotic nature. Don Jose’s music is of a different quality and is the more remarkable achievement. Bizet’s music for Jose is sweet and lyrical in Act I especially in his duet with Micaëla, “Parle moi de ma mere”, perfectly matching the relative innocence and naïve quality that he exhibits at that point. As Jose deteriorates psychologically, so does his music; by Act III, his vocal lines have become angular, dissonant, even disjointed. He is no longer the same person and his music brilliantly reflects that. The characters in the opera whose music changes very little are, of course, Escamillo and Micaëla. Micaëla is a stock character from the opera-comique tradition, a peasant girl from the country with a sensitive spirit but traditionally bound to the moral codes of the village structure, society as she knew it, the church.

Her music never evolves from the lyrical nature of the Act I duet; in the Act III aria “Je dis, que rien ne m’épouvante” we meet exactly the same character we met at the beginning of the opera. She hasn’t grown, but then she doesn’t really need to. Escamillo is also a somewhat pivotal, unchanging character. His Toreador Song is lusty, self-confident, alluring, and his music constantly reflects these traits. His only moment of tenderness is the brief duet with Carmen in Act IV, “Si tu m’aimes”. This also happens to include Carmen’s one moment of unison singing with another character, signaling her complete unanimity with the bullfighter, something she never experiences with Don Jose. Bizet’s musical characterization reminds one of the operas of Mozart, in which we see a style or type of music (and at times even an entire musical world) given to the characters in order to propel the dramatic action. It is in this accomplishment that Bizet has been most successful and remains the most important factor in the centrality of Carmen in the standard repertoire. Carmen: Victim or Seductress?

~ THE MUSICIAN'S LOUNGE Carmen: Victim or Seductress? By Crystal Young-Otterstrom Carmen – what an opera! From being universally scorned at its premiere to today being one of the top four most frequently performed operas in America, this work has run the entire gamut. Central to its mystique is its title character, the woman Carmen. Often dismissed as more antagonist than protagonist and “ruiner” of the innocent Don José, perception of this woman is nearly as diverse a debate as that about the pronunciation of potato. Is she evil? A seductress? Fate/death-obsessed (and hence parochial)? Sex addict? Free spirit? Liberated woman/feminist? Victim? Suicide? It’s rather amazing that a fictional character could spark such debate. Geoges Bizet’s librettists mostly adapted their story from the novella Carmen by Propser Mérimée who in turn was influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin.

As any quick google search will tell you, the work was commissioned and premiered by the family-friendly Opéra-Comique of Paris despite much protestations from Adolphe de Leuven, the co-administrator of the Opéra-Comique. He eventually resigned in protest. As recalled by one of Carmen’s co-librettists, Ludovic Halévy: “It was Bizet who, in 1873, had the idea of extracting an opera libretto from the admirable novella of Mérimée…I went to see Leuven and he actually interrupted me after the first sentence. ‘Carmen! Mérimée ‘s Carmen! Isn’t she killed by her lover? And these bandits, gypsies, and girls working in a cigar factory! At the Opéra-Comique! The family theater, the theater of wedding parties … You’ll frighten our audience away. That’s impossible.’ I insisted and explained to Mr. Leuven that ours was a Carmen, to be sure, but a toned-down, softened Carmen, and that we had actually introduced some characters perfectly in keeping with the style of the opéra-comique, especially a young girl of great chastity and innocence.

There were indeed gypsies, but of the humorous variety (they really weren’t). And Carmen’s death, the inevitable catastrophe at the end, would be sneaked in somehow at the conclusion of a lively and brilliant act, in broad daylight, on a holiday filled with processions, dances, and gay fanfares. Mr. Leuven acquiesced, but after a prolonged struggle. And when I left his office, he said: ‘Please try not to let her die. Death at the Opéra-Comique. That’s never happened before, do you hear, never. Don’t let her die, I implore you, my dear child.’” Thankfully, Bizet himself didn’t allow Carmen to become so watered down as to loose its shock value. Its premiere was every bit as scandalous to the Opéra-Comique audience as de Leuven had feared, and was shut down after a mere 48 performances. Indeed, Bizet himself passed away from a sudden heart attack exactly three months after the premiere, convinced that he was an eternal failure.

Luckily, the Vienna Opera had committed to produce the opera prior to Bizet’s passing and its production, launched in October 1875, proved to be a huge success. It is revered and worshiped by today’s audiences and there are books and books by composers and thinkers singing its praises. It even spawned an entirely new genre of opera. Although such a story might not seem entirely realistic to today’s audiences, to Bizet’s contemporaries, it was entirely too close to home, too real, too current. It spanned an entirely new genre in opera, verismo, i.e. people in the present living normal lives (in contrast to being gods or royalty). In a sense, it was the reality television of the nineteenth century. The story is essentially this: Don José, an inexperienced and “innocent” soldier from the country meets an exotic gypsy woman, Carmen, who has been disturbing the peace. In order to avoid capture, she seduces Don José and escapes.

Through a series of events she is then responsible for his rejection of his naïve fiancé, Micaëla (billed by even the librettist as the antithesis to Carmen), his mutiny against his boss, and his leaving the army to join her band of smugglers. She then gets bored and moves onto the bullfighter Escamillo leading Don José to murder Carmen out of jealousy. Is it really all her fault though? The feminist music historian Catherine Clement in her book Opera: The Undoing of Women laments Carmen’s tragic death and the death of most other opera heroines as victims of oppression by men. They are helplessly tossed about by the whims of their love objects. All except for Carmen, of course. According to Clement, Carmen must die because she refuses to acquiesce to Don José: “She says no. No again. No! She does not want him, does not love him anymore.

He is bleating and he is dangerous, he repeats over and over: ‘There is still time … There is time to save yourself and to save me with you.’ Ah, here is the naked truth: what has to be saved is the man’s image, damaged by pure and simple jealousy, that can bring on all the deaths in the world.” On the other hand, another scholar, Peter Conrad , attributes her death as a near suicide as a result of her superstitions. Having earlier forecast her death through a game of cards, she resigns herself to her fate, and eggs Don José to kill her. Indeed, some singers play the role so that Carmen walks into Don José’s knife because he is not even man enough to kill her. Regardless of how in control she is of her fate, the question remains, is she “a sluttish femme fatale who destroyed a decent, upright soldier” or an “honest … and liberated woman murdered by a maternally dominated psychopath” (Rodney Milnes, music critic). The answer, in many ways, lies with Don José via looking closely at the opera’s source, Mérimée’s novella.

At the beginning of the story, Don José is already on the lamb, having killed a man during an argument resulting from a game of paume (hand tennis). He then runs away to Seville to join the army. From the outset, he is not quite so innocent, as he has already killed a man, is hot-tempered, and often acts irrationally. The opera does not mention this detail, although it is alluded to in Don José and Micaëla’s Act I duet: Don José’s mother writes in the letter delivered by Micaëla, “and tell him that his mother dreams of him day and night. She’s pardoned him, and prays he will always do what’s right.” His mother has pardoned him for Murder #1. Murder #2 is again the result of his temper. After spending a month in jail because he allowed Carmen to escape, Don José kills his superior Zuniga after he orders Don José to stay away from Carmen. Of course in the opera, murder #2 is watered down by the opera’s librettists to Don José temporarily rendering Zuniga unconscious. Either way, Don José is compelled to join Carmen’s band of smugglers.

In the novella, it is here that murder #3 occurs: Don José kills a gypsy, Garcia the One-eyed, in an argument over cards. After all this rage and death, it’s no wonder Carmen gets bored! As in the opera, Carmen then moves her affections to a toreador and is murdered by Don José in a jealous rage. The book certainly gives more insight into the character of Don José and makes his murder of Carmen more of a result of a pattern of emotional overreaction than an out-of-the-blue act of passion by a simple country boy driven to insanity by a devilish gypsy. However it is Mérimée’s own preface that is the most damning statement of all of Carmen: “Woman as a whole is bitter. She possesses but two redeeming moments: one in bed and the other at death.” Nevertheless, neither character, in both the novella and opera, are truly innocent creatures. Carmen’s murder is not the result of her infidelity, flirtation with, or abuse of Don José. She does not die simply for being a man-eater. It is also not the consequence of Don José’s propensity to kill people when they don’t do what he wants.

Perhaps the tragic destiny of both main characters is the result of war, of the brutal battle between the sexes that Nietzsche deems the heart of the opera. He exclaimed the following upon seeing the opera for the twentieth time: “The love whose means is war, whose very essence is the mortal hatred between the sexes! I know no case in which the tragic irony, which constitutes the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so terrible a formula, as in the last cry of Don José with which the work ends: “Yes, it is I who have killed her,/ I — my adored Carmen!” What do you think of Carmen? Is she the owner of her fate, the first great opera heroine to take control of her destiny, to speak out against men, or is Don José passionate act simply a result of her constant torment and flirtation? Does she ‘deserve’ her destiny? Decide for yourself while enjoying one of the greatest operas of all time. Carmen – what an opera! From being universally scorned at its premiere to today being one of the top four most frequently performed operas in America, this work has run the entire gamut. Central to its mystique is its title character, the woman Carmen.

Often dismissed as more antagonist than protagonist and “ruiner” of the innocent Don José, perception of this woman is nearly as diverse a debate as that about the pronunciation of potato. Is she evil? A seductress? Fate/death-obsessed (and hence parochial)? Sex addict? Free spirit? Liberated woman/feminist? Victim? Suicide? It’s rather amazing that a fictional character could spark such debate. Geoges Bizet’s librettists mostly adapted their story from the novella Carmen by Propser Mérimée who in turn was influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin. As any quick google search will tell you, the work was commissioned and premiered by the family-friendly Opéra-Comique of Paris despite much protestations from Adolphe de Leuven, the co-administrator of the Opéra-Comique. He eventually resigned in protest.

As recalled by one of Carmen’s co-librettists, Ludovic Halévy: “It was Bizet who, in 1873, had the idea of extracting an opera libretto from the admirable novella of Mérimée…I went to see Leuven and he actually interrupted me after the first sentence. ‘Carmen! Mérimée ‘s Carmen! Isn’t she killed by her lover? And these bandits, gypsies, and girls working in a cigar factory! At the Opéra-Comique! The family theater, the theater of wedding parties … You’ll frighten our audience away. That’s impossible.’ I insisted and explained to Mr. Leuven that ours was a Carmen, to be sure, but a toned-down, softened Carmen, and that we had actually introduced some characters perfectly in keeping with the style of the opéra-comique, especially a young girl of great chastity and innocence. There were indeed gypsies, but of the humorous variety (they really weren’t).

And Carmen’s death, the inevitable catastrophe at the end, would be sneaked in somehow at the conclusion of a lively and brilliant act, in broad daylight, on a holiday filled with processions, dances, and gay fanfares. Mr. Leuven acquiesced, but after a prolonged struggle. And when I left his office, he said: ‘Please try not to let her die. Death at the Opéra-Comique. That’s never happened before, do you hear, never. Don’t let her die, I implore you, my dear child.'” Thankfully, Bizet himself didn’t allow Carmen to become so watered down as to loose its shock value. Its premiere was every bit as scandalous to the Opéra-Comique audience as de Leuven had feared, and was shut down after a mere 48 performances. Indeed, Bizet himself passed away from a sudden heart attack exactly three months after the premiere, convinced that he was an eternal failure. Luckily, the Vienna Opera had committed to produce the opera prior to Bizet’s passing and its production, launched in October 1875, proved to be a huge success.

[The Viennese version replaced the spoken dialogue of the French version with sung recitative written in the style of Bizet. The sung version is actually still the most common version performed today. Tonight, you will hear the original French version with spoken dialogue although much of the dialogue has been cut.] It is revered and worshiped by today’s audiences and there are books and books by composers and thinkers singing its praises [Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Nietzsche each saw over 20 performances of the work. Tchaikovsky foretold that Carmen would become the most popular opera in the world]. It even spawned an entirely new genre of opera. Although such a story might not seem entirely realistic to today’s audiences, to Bizet’s contemporaries, it was entirely too close to home, too real, too current. It spanned an entirely new genre in opera, verismo, i.e. people in the present living normal lives (in contrast to being gods or royalty). In a sense, it was the reality television of the nineteenth century. The story is essentially this: Don José, an inexperienced and “innocent” soldier from the country meets an exotic gypsy woman, Carmen, who has been disturbing the peace.

In order to avoid capture, she seduces Don José and escapes. Through a series of events she is then responsible for his rejection of his naïve fiancé, Micaëla (billed by even the librettist as the antithesis to Carmen), his mutiny against his boss, and his leaving the army to join her band of smugglers. She then gets bored and moves onto the bullfighter Escamillo leading Don José to murder Carmen out of jealousy. Is it really all her fault though? The feminist music historian Catherine Clement in her book Opera: The Undoing of Women laments Carmen’s tragic death and the death of most other opera heroines as victims of oppression by men. They are helplessly tossed about by the whims of their love objects. All except for Carmen, of course. According to Clement, Carmen must die because she refuses to acquiesce to Don José: “She says no. No again. No! She does not want him, does not love him anymore.

He is bleating and he is dangerous, he repeats over and over: ‘There is still time … There is time to save yourself and to save me with you.’ Ah, here is the naked truth: what has to be saved is the man’s image, damaged by pure and simple jealousy, that can bring on all the deaths in the world.” On the other hand, another scholar, Peter Conrad , attributes her death as a near suicide as a result of her superstitions. Having earlier forecast her death through a game of cards, she resigns herself to her fate, and eggs Don José to kill her. Indeed, some singers play the role so that Carmen walks into Don José’s knife because he is not even man enough to kill her. Regardless of how in control she is of her fate, the question remains, is she “a sluttish femme fatale who destroyed a decent, upright soldier” or an “honest … and liberated woman murdered by a maternally dominated psychopath” (Rodney Milnes, music critic). The answer, in many ways, lies with Don José via looking closely at the opera’s source, Mérimée’s novella.

At the beginning of the story, Don José is already on the lamb, having killed a man during an argument resulting from a game of paume (hand tennis). He then runs away to Seville to join the army. From the outset, he is not quite so innocent, as he has already killed a man, is hot-tempered, and often acts irrationally. The opera does not mention this detail, although it is alluded to in Don José and Micaëla’s Act I duet: Don José’s mother writes in the letter delivered by Micaëla, “and tell him that his mother dreams of him day and night. She’s pardoned him, and prays he will always do what’s right.” His mother has pardoned him for Murder #1. Murder #2 is again the result of his temper. After spending a month in jail because he allowed Carmen to escape, Don José kills his superior Zuniga after he orders Don José to stay away from Carmen. Of course in the opera, murder #2 is watered down by the opera’s librettists to Don José temporarily rendering Zuniga unconscious. Either way, Don José is compelled to join Carmen’s band of smugglers.

In the novella, it is here that murder #3 occurs: Don José kills a gypsy, Garcia the One-eyed, in an argument over cards. After all this rage and death, it’s no wonder Carmen gets bored! As in the opera, Carmen then moves her affections to a toreador and is murdered by Don José in a jealous rage. The book certainly gives more insight into the character of Don José and makes his murder of Carmen more of a result of a pattern of emotional overreaction than an out-of-the-blue act of passion by a simple country boy driven to insanity by a devilish gypsy. However it is Mérimée’s own preface that is the most damning statement of all of Carmen: “Woman as a whole is bitter. She possesses but two redeeming moments: one in bed and the other at death.” Nevertheless, neither character, in both the novella and opera, are truly innocent creatures. Carmen’s murder is not the result of her infidelity, flirtation with, or abuse of Don José. She does not die simply for being a man-eater. It is also not the consequence of Don José’s propensity to kill people when they don’t do what he wants.

Perhaps the tragic destiny of both main characters is the result of war, of the brutal battle between the sexes that Nietzsche deems the heart of the opera. He exclaimed the following upon seeing the opera for the twentieth time: “The love whose means is war, whose very essence is the mortal hatred between the sexes! I know no case in which the tragic irony, which constitutes the kernel of love, is expressed with such severity, or in so terrible a formula, as in the last cry of Don José with which the work ends: ‘Yes, it is I who have killed her,/ I — my adored Carmen!'” What do you think of Carmen? Is she the owner of her fate, the first great opera heroine to take control of her destiny, to speak out against men, or is Don José passionate act simply a result of her constant torment and flirtation? Does she ‘deserve’ her destiny? Decide for yourself while enjoying one of the greatest operas of all time. This entry was posted in Utah Symphony . Bookmark the permalink .

Post navigation Carmen the Opera: Synopsis, Music & Composer | Study.com Carmen the Opera: Synopsis, Music & Composer Watch short & fun videos Start Your Free Trial Today Instructor: Alisha Nypaver Add to Add to Add to Want to watch this again later? Log in or sign up to add this lesson to a Custom Course. Custom Courses are courses that you create from Study.com lessons. Use them just like other courses to track progress, access quizzes and exams, and share content. Teachers Organize and share selected lessons with your class. Make planning easier by creating your own custom course. Students Create a new course from any lesson page or your dashboard. From any lesson page: Click "Add to" located below the video player and follow the prompts to name your course and save your lesson. From your dashboard: Click on the "Custom Courses" tab, then click "Create course". Next, go to any lesson page and begin adding lessons. Edit your Custom Course directly from your dashboard. Personalize: Name your Custom Course and add an optional description or learning objective. Organize: Create chapters to group lesson within your course. Remove and reorder chapters and lessons at any time. Share your Custom Course or assign lessons and chapters.

Teacher Edition: Share or assign lessons and chapters by clicking the "Teacher" tab on the lesson or chapter page you want to assign. Students' quiz scores and video views will be trackable in your "Teacher" tab. Premium Edition: You can share your Custom Course by copying and pasting the course URL. Only Study.com members will be able to access the entire course. The captivating music from the opera ''Carmen'' has delighted and inspired audiences for decades. This lesson explores the main plot points of this opera and explains why it wasn't always a crowd favorite. Synopsis Carmen is an opera by Georges Bizet based on an 1845 novella by French dramatist Prosper Mérimée. The title character, a wild Spanish gypsy, is unscrupulous in matters of the law and of the heart. Carmen entices the crowd The opening scene is set in the 1830s in Seville, Spain. Carmen attracts everyone's attentions, but soldier Don José pretends not to notice her. The flirtatious Carmen throws him a flower. He intends to throw it away, but hides it when his girlfriend, Micaëla, arrives.

A knife fight breaks out between Carmen and another woman, and José is ordered to arrest Carmen. Thinking fast, Carmen seduces José and escapes, which results in José's arrest for breach of duty. A month later, Carmen and her friends are entertaining soldiers in a tavern. A famous bullfighter, Escamillo, arrives. He flirts with Carmen, who rebuffs him because she is waiting for José to be released from jail. When José arrives, Carmen rewards him with an erotic dance. As he prepares to return to the barracks for the night, she taunts him, saying that if he really loved her, he would run off with her. José protests and shows her that he has saved the flower she gave him as a sign of true love. At that moment, Jose's lieutenant returns to arrest Carmen. The men fight and are separated by Carmen's gang of smugglers. Because José has attacked a superior officer, he has no choice but to run away with Carmen and the smugglers to the mountains. In the mountains, Carmen bores of José and advises him to go home to his mother. Escamillo arrives and invites everyone to his next bullfight before he leaves. The closing act depicts Escamillo's bullfight.

Carmen is on Escamillo's arm, but she runs into José outside the arena. José begs Carmen to come away with him, but she refuses, saying that she was born free and will die free. In a jealous rage, José stabs her to death while the crowd inside the arena cheers Escamillo to victory. The Opera and Composer Photograph of Georges Bizet in 1875, months before he died Carmen was written by French composer Georges Bizet (1838-1875). Bizet had written several operas, but had not had much success, mostly due to the fact that Parisian audiences preferred older, established works instead of modern ones. Despite this, the Paris Opéra-Comique commissioned this opera from him for the 1874 season. Rehearsals were scheduled to begin in October of 1873, but the opera directors had some reservations about the subject matter, believing it to be too risqué for the public stage. Bizet toned the opera down a bit, and rehearsals began a year late in October of 1874.

During practice, Bizet found that he had to make a few changes to the music to appease the musicians, opera directors, and singers. Because of all the alterations, opening night was pushed back until March 3, 1875. The Music Bizet wrote over 1,200 pages of music which he self-described as 'vivacious' and 'full of color.' The score uses Spanish and Latin elements to create memorable melodies that have found their way into popular culture in commercials, TV shows, and movies, including Disney's Up. One of the most famous musical numbers from this opera is Carmen's 'Habanera.' A habanera is a Cuban dance form with a characteristic and catchy rhythm. This rhythm dominates the bass line of the number. The melody opens with a descending chromatic scale, which is a sequence of notes that uses every possible tone in the octave as defined by the Western tuning system. It can start and end on any pitch, but all the pitches in between must be sequential and organized from lowest to highest or highest to lowest. Chromatic scales can be thought of as a sort of musical staircase, with each note being one of the steps.

The descending chromatic scale melody from Carmen is heard in this scene from the Disney movie Up as the character Carl descends the staircase in his chairlift Carmen's 'Habanera' is her opening number, and it's designed to give the audience a snapshot of her character and personality. The lyrics revolve around the idea of free love, unrestrained by the confines of marriage: 'Love is a rebellious bird that none can tame. And one who calls it calls in vain...' × Performed in French with projected English translations Performance running time: 3 hours 15 minutes including 1 intermission Carmen Opera Overview “Gubanova is heart-rending as she keeps rushing headlong towards a final destiny whose horror we sense long before she does.” - Toronto Star on Ekaterina Gubanova “Her tone is robust and full of dark colors...a musical embodiment of Carmen's force of will.” - San Francisco Chronicle on Anita Rachvelishvili Opera has plenty of femmes fatales, but there’s only one Carmen. Her allure proves spellbinding as she seduces a hapless corporal and then a dashing bullfighter.

You’ll feel the heat as you’re captivated by Bizet’s bewitching melodies — the smoky Habanera, the playful Seguidilla, the provocative Gypsy Song. Every single melody in this ever-popular opera is a beloved hit, and each is brought to life by a cast of spectacular leading artists. Join us for this production — never before seen in Chicago — and find out why it’s the perfect work to see again and again, and the ideal opportunity to introduce new fans to the thrill of opera. Photo: Lynn Lane/ Houston Grand Opera #LyricCarmen Carmen Opera Resources Synopsis In Seville a corporal, Don José, is ordered to escort the gypsy Carmen to prison after she attacks another girl. José, however, falls instantly in love with Carmen, lets her escape, and is himself sent to prison. Following his release he visits Carmen at a tavern, where she has just met the bullfighter Escamillo. After dueling with a superior officer, José is forced to desert the army. He joins Carmen and her smuggler friends in the mountains, where she quickly tires of him.

Once his hometown sweetheart Micaëla arrives to bring him home to his dying mother, Carmen is free to accept the attentions of Escamillo. José later comes to the arena in Seville where Escamillo is about to fight a bull. Outside the arena José confronts Carmen. He pleads with her and finally, overcome by jealousy, stabs her just as the crowd inside proclaims Escamillo’s victory.

Question: Escamillo, a bullfighter, is a character in which opera?
Answer: Carmen