Feb 28, 2024
Carmen: From “Fiasco” to Favourite
Even though it is considered by many to be the world’s most popular opera of all time, Carmen had a very difficult start.
“The public did not recognize the work’s stature immediately, and Bizet was hard hit by the fiasco of the first performance. However, that he died of a broken heart as a result is nothing more than a sentimental legend. In the following months, he worked at an oratorio and on a revision of the opera for a planned Viennese staging in the autumn.
Unfortunately, he succumbed to a weak heart on June 3, 1875, at just 36 years of age, his death coinciding to the minute with the curtain that fell on the 33rd performance of his Carmen.
Six years after the premiere, Carmen was being performed in 15 cities across three continents. The march of success was already unstoppable. In 1907, the public rioted outside the theatre in São Paulo, Brazil, causing several deaths when some people were unable to get tickets for the performance.
It is difficult to judge whether the cool public reception to the first performance of Carmen was due to the opera’s subject or to the music itself. In the end, both provided grounds for rejection. With a Roma woman as the main character, one who lures a soldier away from the army, sings and dances in disreputable places, takes up with smugglers, and is finally killed on stage by her former lover, Bizet’s work certainly stands apart from the conventions of opéra comique. The milieu was described as lawless and the main character accused of indecency. As a result, the press demanded that minors be denied entry to performances of Carmen for moral reasons. The truth of course is that Bizet managed to create an archetypal figure whose effect is comparable with that of Don Giovanni, Hamlet, or Faust. And in the 20th century, Carmen acquired special status as the embodiment of a woman who makes her own decisions.” (1)
Over the past decade, Carmen has been the third-most performed opera worldwide. (2) There are well over 200 recordings to choose from, and its music is continually in use in commercials, cartoons, and movies. Not bad for something that started out as a fiasco.
- Opera, Editor-in-chief, András Batta,2000 English Edition, Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH
- Manitoba Opera Carmen Study Guide
