Carmen

Bizet’s Carmen is a staple of the repertoire of the majority of opera houses worldwide. The opera is extremely popular owing to the music, abounding in torrential rhythms, engrossing melodies and bewitching songs of the beautiful Gypsy, as well as the overwhelming power of the passions depicted in the story.

Carmen is actually one of the first verismo operas that preceded the “manifesto” of the Italian artistic movement. Its style, and the death of the title heroine, which were at variance with the established opéra comique conventions, seem to have been the reason why the work did not give rise to much public enthusiasm at and in the wake of the world premiere in Paris in 1875. Yet Carmen soon triumphed in other European cities.

Bizet’s Carmen is a staple of the repertoire of the majority of opera houses worldwide. It is extremely popular owing to the music, abounding in torrential rhythms, engrossing melodies and bewitching songs of the beautiful Gypsy, as well as to the overwhelming power of the passions depicted in the story.

Carmen was first presented in Prague in 1880, at the Estates Theatre. The National Theatre staged it on 3 January 1884, shortly after its opening, as the very first foreign opera. In our new production, the story of Don José, a soldier who falls madly in love with the Gypsy Carmen, is retold by the German director Grischa Asagaroff, who has successfully collaborated with many of the world's leading opera houses in Vienna, Zurich, Munich, Dresden, Houston and elsewhere.