Carmen Tickets

Carmen is a French Opera written by Georges Bizet. It is considered to be one of the most popular operas of all time and it is also the final opera written by Bizet as he died the same year that it premiered.

The Opera tells the tale of the eponymous gypsy Carmen. It is set in Seville, Spain around the 1830s. Carmen woos a corporal by the name of Don Jose. The relationship between Carmen and Don Jose eventually leads to rejection and the latter’s mutiny against his superiors and his joining a gang of smugglers. When Carmen turns her affections to a bullfighter named Escamillo, Don Jose’s jealousy leads him to murder Carmen.

Carmen premiered on March 3, 1875, at the Opera-Comique in Paris. It was not well received and was denounced by a majority of the critics who came to see it so much so that it was almost withdrawn from a fourth performance. The opera, however, prevailed to have 48 performances in its first run. Receipt of the show among the Parisian opera going crowd was poor to the point that tickets were given away in order to increase attendance. On June of that same year, Bizet, at age 37, died of a heart attack. He would never come to see what an international success Carmen was to be.

In October of its debut year, Carmen was performed in Vienna where it was received with popular and critical acclaim. Since then it has been one of the most performed operas in the world. It wasn’t until 1883 that Carmen was once again performed at the Opera Comique.

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