What's the story? In Seville, Carmen the gypsy meets Don José, who becomes obsessed by her. Carmen loves freedom, and refuses to be pinned down. When a fight kicks off between Carmen and some other women in the tobacco factory, the soldier José has to arrest her. Carmen seduces him, and he lets her escape. He deserts from the army and joins the gypsies on the open road. The relationship disintegrates – independence is her passion, but he’s possessive and gets into a vicious fight when Carmen catches the eye of celebrated bullfighter Escamillo. Micaëla, José’s childhood sweetheart, persuades him to go back to see his dying mother. José catches up with Carmen again outside the bullring in Seville. Carmen furiously asserts her independence, and he kills her.

Why should we care? Carmen is based on a French novella by Prosper Merimée, published in 1847 in a magazine of exotic travellers’ tales. It attracted the composer Georges Bizet (1838-75), whose operas explored exotic settings like a temple in Sri Lanka for The Pearl Fishers. Although Carmen smells like Spain to us, it is thoroughly French, beating with the desire to escape, to sense the drama and danger of a wider world. Carmen was controversial as soon as it premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1875, and Bizet died too soon to enjoy it becoming one of the most famous and popular of operas. The tale of outsiders, gypsies and criminals, is not a comfortable story. Carmen needs to keep moving, to feel the fresh air of freedom. But that’s not what José wants. His affection isn’t heart-shaped-candy love. He loves Carmen like an addict loves the bottle – madly, irrationally, and he can never ever be satisfied. He has already killed a man, and he carries a knife. Sometimes he seems ridiculous, but he’s also dangerous. The tragedy draws us in until we might be watching our own struggles with affection and independence, wondering how we love, how we’d choose to die.

What does it sound like? Carmen is unique, because it’s an opera with pop songs. Bizet loved hanging out in the sultry gypsy cabarets in Paris. Here he heard the Flamenco, the winding, stamping dance whose rhythms infiltrate Carmen’s songs. And he saw the habanera, an Afro-Cuban dance. It’s fantastically sensual – slow, swaying, with sexy arms and hips – and Carmen’s habanera (‘Love’s a bird that lives in freedom’) makes it clear how compelling she is. Carmen’s songs are actually like cabaret numbers – she delivers a seductive or sassy tune, and leaves with her head held high. José, however, doesn’t want his songs to end – just like his relationship with Carmen. He swims in great pools of melody, pushing his voice higher and higher – love lifts us up where we belong, and he keeps trying to fly. Listen out too for Escamillo’s famous, swaggering ‘Toreador’ song, and the dark ‘fate’ theme that reminds us trouble is on the way, especially when Carmen anxiously reads her fortune in the cards.

Other stuff The epigraph to Merimée’s novella sneers, ‘Women is as bitter as gall, but she has two good moments – in bed and dead.’ In Latin, ‘carmen’ means song, prophesy or charm. Spanish style was so fashionable in France that artists asked the government to allow bullfighting in the middle of Paris. Carmen may have been based on La Mogador, a dancer and prostitute who wrote, ‘the men to whom I have given most are those who have asked least of me.’ Like José, Bizet struggled between desire and duty – preparing to marry, he wrote ‘I am sure of myself! The good has killed the evil! The victory is won!’ Bizet believed Carmen would win over his critics: ‘this time I have written a work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody.’ Carmen had difficult rehearsals – the chorus objected to realistic movement, especially the fighting and flirting. The tragic payoff was also controversial, because the Opéra-Comique preferred happy endings.

Exploring further - links Carmen and other stories by Prosper Merimée (Oxford). The original story on which Bizet based his opera. Carmen, edited by Susan McClary (Cambridge Opera Handbook). A guide to the opera’s music, context and history. Carmen (1984), film directed by Francesco Rosi with Plácido Domingo and Julia Minges-Johnson, and filmed on location in the Spanish Mountains. Carmen Jones (1954), film directed by Otto Preminger, with Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte, set in black America, with terrific lyrics. Carmen (1983) directed by Carlos Saura. A passionate flamenco film version. La Tragédie de Carmen (1983), film directed by Peter Brook. Strips the story to its essentials. Carmen (1915), silent movie directed by Cecil B de Mille.