A fated, triangular relationship and probably the most famous opera of them all, CARMEN flopped on 3rd March 1875, the evening of its premiere at the Paris Opera. The brash, sensual heroine of its title stands for a set of morals alien to the bourgeois value system. Carmen's unbending urge to be free, her readiness to enter into relationships only on condition that she retain complete independence, equality and liberty, render her an irresistible object of desire. Bizet took Prosper Mérimée's novella and succeeded in retelling the story in the form of a comic opera that gives musical expression to all aspects of the human condition - levity, tedium, silliness and hardness, seduction and playfulness, cruelty and destiny.
