“Carmen” didn’t begin life as an opera: French Romantic writer Prosper Mérimée conceived this tale of Spanish passion and tragic jealousy in 1845, thirty years before his compatriot Georges Bizet ...

The story of the Spanish gypsy girl comes from Prosper Mérimée’s novella Carmen, published in 1845. It caught Bizet’s attention, and he proposed that he adapt it for opera with two leading Parisian ...

People who love opera sometimes laugh about how bloody its plots are. But Carmen isn’t nearly as violent as it could have been. As it is, Carmen ends with the killing of its charismatic heroine, ...

The opera about a seductive gypsy who tempts an upright soldier then deserts him for a sexy bullfighter is not exactly family fare. But it is very French. In the 1870s, upcoming composer Georges Bizet ...

With unusual candor, James Robinson, who is directing the upcoming production of “Carmen” at Court Theatre, admits, “I have a feeling that opera enthusiasts might be exceedingly disappointed.” Oh?

"Our object in any form of theatre is to make it something totally accessible, not in the sense of popularizing it, but of making it meaningful to whoever watches it.” Peter Brook I have been a fan of ...

When San Diego Opera launched its new Shiley Detour series this season, it promised a new program of smaller, nontraditional works that are “surprising, intense and powerful.” That might be an ...

Carmen is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was ...

It’s regularly voted the most popular opera in the world, but Georges Bizet had no idea that his final work would become such a triumph, as Martin Buzacott explains. Prosper Mérimée was a French ...