In the opening chapter to American musicologist Susan McClary’s book, Georges Bizet: Carmen, language professor Peter Robinson makes the point that the real battle in Carmen is between the sexes. The opera is based on the novella Carmen (1845) by Prosper Mérimée and the subject matter in the original story, which is necessarily simplified for the opera, represents a number of fantasies involving race, class and gender that were circulating in 19th-century French culture. Don José then murders Carmen in a fit of jealousy.

But Carmen becomes bored with Don José and finds the bullfighter Escamillo to take his place. She is responsible for the break-up between Don José and his fiancée, Micaëla, the antithesis of Carmen, and prompts him to leave the army to join her and her band of smugglers. Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones 1954. Carmen has been causing trouble in the factory and, to avoid being imprisoned she seduces Don José, who has been ordered to arrest her, and escapes. Don José, a soldier from the country, and Carmen, an exotic gypsy woman working in a cigarette factory. The story of Carmen has two central characters. But there is a little more to it than that … A battle of the sexes Opera Australia’s production of Carmen, based on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Norwegian National Opera co-production, opens in Melbourne tomorrow night.Ĭarmen is often simply understood as a story about a doomed love affair.

From its initial underwhelming success, Bizet’s Carmen has become one of the world’s most popular and frequently performed operas. These descriptors have been circulating since the opera’s premiere in Paris in 1875. The fictional character of Carmen – the heroine of Bizet’s opera – attracts a range of labels which variously position her as seductress, femme fatale, sex addict, fate/ death obsessed, victim, liberated woman and even feminist.

Carmen opera soundtrack