After wrangling with his librettist, Bizet wrote most of its words himself. (The Met uses the sung recitatives.)Ĩ) Bizet was very particular about Carmen's opening number, her famous Habanera. In today's opera world, both versions are heard. The dialogue was soon replaced by sung recitatives, which held the stage for a century. The building still stands today and now belongs to the University of Seville.ħ) The original version of Carmen mixed music with spoken dialogue. This was an actual place, which at its height employed 6000 women as cigarette makers.

1001.Ħ) The opening scene of Carmen takes place outside a cigarette factory in Seville. This Saturday's broadcast will be performance no. Three months later, he was dead, at age 36, never to know its world-wide success.ĥ) The Metropolitan Opera's first Carmen was performed in 1884. Bizet himself regarded its reception as a fiasco. Then he would say savagely: Je ne dors pas! ' *Ĥ) The first performance of Carmen was received coldly. sometimes would make little slips in fingering.

Not that he ever scolded, but the way he would look at you through those eyeglasses! I.

One twelve-year-old student remembered, 'I was afraid of him. Other popular works by Bizet: the opera The Pearl Fishers, the suites from L'Arlésienne, and the Symphony in C.ģ) While composing Carmen, Bizet was also teaching piano. He starts out as a respectable soldier, but obsessive love turns him into a lawbreaker, an outcast, and finally, a killer.Ģ) Georges Bizet wrote several operas, but Carmen is far and away the most successful. Two characters are at the center: Carmen who demands her freedom at any cost, and her lover Don José. Ten facts, basic and otherwise, about Carmenġ) Carmen was premiered in Paris in 1875.

Carmen opera first performance