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CARMEN, Vienna State Opera, 28 April 2023 - 19:00

Event details

  • Category: Operas
  • Event: CARMEN
  • Date/Time: 28 April 2023 - 19:00
  • Venue: Vienna State Opera
  • Address: Opernring 2, 1010 Wien / Vienna (Map)
  • Other Dates: Show alternatives

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Description

It's a story full of misunderstandings: Love is confused with desire, an affair with an exclusive relationship, affection with possession, and violence with passion. But the highest price in this web of dysfunctional relationships is paid by Carmen – a woman who loves her independence more than anything else, including men. Her murderer is the dutiful soldier Don José, who until now only had eyes for his mother and the young Micaëla, with whom he grew up together. But when he notices Carmen, the worker coveted by all his comrades, he also falls for her. After Carmen’s arrest due to a bloody scuffle, José enables her to escape and follows her into illegality. Both of them now live in a gang of smugglers. Yet while living together, José puts Carmen under pressure with his jealousy and loses her affection.
When he returns from a visit to his mother, he finds that Carmen is now in love with the successful bullfighter Escamillo. Although Carmen is aware of José's tendency towards uncontrolled violence, she faces the confrontation. While Escamillo hunts down a bull in the arena, José stabs his former girlfriend in the forecourt.
The fact that the opera is set exclusively in the lower strata of society, among soldiers, smugglers, Spanish Roma and factory workers, was considered shocking to the Paris audience at its premiere in 1875. Not to mention that the dying title heroine was refused a farewell aria – which was also felt to be an expression of harshness and violence. It was not until the Vienna performance series that the triumphal march of Carmen began that same year. Two musical motifs characterize the opera: the self-confident refrain of the famous »Toréador« song and a mysterious, sombre motif associated with Carmen's premature and violent death, which she perceives as fateful. In the finale, when the victorious torero is cheered in the bullring while the stabbed Carmen collapses at the gates, the two melodies come together.
The literary model for the opera – a novella of the same name by Prosper Mérimée – shows Carmen as a morally depraved person who unscrupulously exploits men for her own ends or even lures them into deadly traps. Georges Bizet and his librettists, on the other hand, transformed their main character into a fascinating woman whom men find so attractive precisely because she refuses to accept traditional norms. It is not with her looks but with her voice that she draws Don José’s attention to herself by singing a habanera, a dance song of African-American origin: »L'amour est un oiseau rebelle« (»Love is a rebellious bird«). Carmen's dazzling and non-conformist personality is reflected in her singing part, which is as powerful as it is tender.

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