Carmen

Carmen (Bizet: Carmen). Soprano. (but usually sung by a mez.). A gypsy who works in the local cigarette factory, she regards love as a game. During a break from work, the girls all gather outside. Carmen notices a young dragoon corporal, Don José, who is in town with a battalion of soldiers. She flirts with him and throws him a flower and he falls in love with her. The women rush out of the factory - Carmen is accused of cutting another girl's face and José is ordered to take her to prison but on the way he allows her to escape. At an inn, Carmen and her friends drink and talk with soldiers. The toreador Escamillo arrives and is attracted to Carmen but she is waiting for José. He arrives but Carmen is cross when he says he must return to his regiment. If he loved her, he would stay with her and come to the mountains with her and her friends. Thus she persuades him to desert and join her band of smugglers. In their mountain camp, Carmen and José argue a lot. Reading fortunes in a pack of cards, Carmen is upset to see death for herself and her lover. Escamillo comes looking for her. Carmen prevents the two men fighting and then leaves with the toreador for the bullring to watch him fight. José, still in love with Carmen and jealous of Escamillo, hides in the crowd, watching their arrival at the bullring. When he reveals himself, Carmen tells him she no longer wants him and is in love with the bullfighter. José kills her. Arias: L'amour est un Oiseau rebelle (the Habanera) (‘Love is like a rebellious bird’), Près des remparts de Seville (the Séguidille) (‘By the city walls of Seville’); duet (with Escamillo): Si tu m'aimes (‘If you love me’). Because the opera first met with real success in Vienna, the earliest performances of Carmen were in German and many German-speaking singers have undertaken the leading roles. In the title role these included the sopranos Emmy Destinn and Marie Gutheil-Schoder. However, in the past 50 years it has been more usual for Carmen to be sung by Spanish or Italian - or certainly Italianate - sopranos and mezzo-sopranos (there have been surprisingly few famous French Carmens, those who spring to mind being Emma Calvé and Régine Crespin). These have included Minnie Hauk, Giulietta Simionato, Jean Madeira, Risë Stevens, Victoria de los Angeles, Leontyne Price, Maria Callas, Grace Bumbry, Teresa Berganza, Sally Burgess, Maria Ewing, and Waltraud Meier. Created (1875) by Célestine Galli-Marié.