Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself influenced by the narrative poem ‘The Gypsies' (1824) by Pushkin. Mérimée had read the poem in Russian by 1840 and translated it into French in 1852.

The opera premiered at the Opéra Comique of Paris on March 3, 1875, but the opening run was a failure, the work being denounced by the majority of critics. Shortly after the composer's death only three months later, the production in Vienna (October 1875) began its path to worldwide popularity.

Since the 1880s it has been one of the world's most performed operas and a staple of the operatic repertoire. Carmen appears as number four on Opera America's list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America.

Bizet's final opera not only transformed the opera-comique genre that had been static for half a century, it virtually killed it. Within a few years, the traditional distinction between opera (serious, heroic and declamatory) and opera-comique (light-hearted, bourgeois and conversational with spoken dialogue) disappeared beyond recovery. Moreover, Carmen nourished a movement that was to win both celebrity and notoriety first in Italy and then elsewhere: the cult of realism known as verismo.

The early death of Bizet and the negligence of his immediate heirs and publisher lead, as with most of Bizet's operas, to major textual problems for which scholars and performers only began to find solutions since the 1960s.

The story is set in Seville, Spain, circa 1830, and concerns the eponymous Carmen, a beautiful Gypsy with a fiery temper. Free with her love, she woos the corporal Don José, an inexperienced soldier. Their relationship leads to his rejection of his former love, mutiny against his superior, and joining a gang of smugglers. His jealousy when she turns from him to the bullfighter Escamillo leads him to murder Carmen.

Background

After approaching the singer Marie Roze, who declined the part, du Locle offered the part to the famous mezzo-soprano Galli-Marié. Financial negotiations over her fees ensued, and she accepted it in December 1873 (she agreed to 2,500 francs per month for four months). She apparently did not know the Mérimée novella.

During rehearsals, du Locle's assistant de Leuven voiced his discontent about the opera's plot, and pressured Bizet and the librettists to alter the tragic ending. De Leuven felt that families would be shocked to see such a "debauched" opera on the stage of the Opéra-Comique which had a reputation as a family-friendly theatre, with many boxes used by parents to interview prospective sons-in-law. The librettists agreed to change the ending, but Bizet refused, which led directly to De Leuven's resignation from the theatre in early 1874.