George Bizet (1838-1875) composed his opera Carmen following
the old tradition of setting operas in Spain, more than 20 in Seville alone.
It opened in 1875 at the Opera Comique in Paris.The story-line is more
complicated than Prosper Merimée’s novel; more characters were added
and stereotypes exaggerated by the libbrétists Meilhac and Halevy.
The original story had to be adapted to conform to the conventions and
expectations of the audience accostumed to bourgeois melodrama. The result
was a little too shocking for the family theater (Carmen was a public enemy,
a threat to law and order, conjuring revolutionary ghosts, and inevitably
had to die in the end, something unseen in the Opera Comique) but also
a little too diluted and denaturalized for the purist, who considered it
basically a French opera imbued with Spanish gypsy motifs, perhaps a Spanish
reflection of a moment in French history, after the failed revolution of
the Paris Commune. It was not a success, initially. Nevertheless, Carmen
would soon become the most popular opera of all time and the Spanish Gypsy
the enduring symbol of the exotiziced romantic construction of Spain, as
can testified by the numerous versions and resurrections of Carmen, on
stage, on screen, even on ice. Amazingly, as to this day Carmen is
still often claimed, in academic discourse and in popular culture, to represent
the pure -unmediated- spirit of Spain.
For further reading, you may consult these books:
McClary, Susan. George Bizet's Carmen. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992.
Gould, Evlyn. The Fate of Carmen. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
UP, 1996.