Video on demand: Carmen

Among Seville’s cigar makers, Carmen is the most attractive woman around. Arrested for the assault of a friend, she enthrals the brigadier Don José who lets her escape. For her, José abandons his childhood sweetheart, he gives up his rank, deserts the army… and to what ends will passion drive him when he loses Carmen's love to the glamorous bullfighter Escamillo?

We can only imagine the reactions of the first Parisian audiences at the Opéra Comique, who are said to have been shocked to see the incarnation of such an independent heroine. But what would those audiences in 1875 have actually seen on stage? With the support of Palazzetto Bru Zane (Centre de Musique Romantique Française), Opéra de Rouen Normandie have (re)created Bizet’s Carmen with the original costumes, sets and staging of the 1875 premiere. It has been a long journey for Carmen, the French opera that has now become the one most performed around the globe. After the outrage at the première and Bizet’s sudden death in the same year, Carmen started to win the hearts of audiences in Vienna, Brussels, Saint-Petersburg, New York… and only triumphed in Paris in 1883. This production offers the restoration of the original mise-en-scène, costumes and sets, to give audiences today an idea of what Bizet’s searing depiction of a woman, who craves love but creates obsession, looked like in its early days.

Recorded on 24.09.2023