CARMEN / PROGRAMME / Bastille / Avril 2019

Description

What a scandal on March 3, 1875, at the premiere of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique before an audience shocked by this "Castilian debauchery"! Georges Bizet died three months later, without suspecting that his score would become one of the most performed in the world. If the success of the work is due to its unforgettable melodies, it owes much to the liberated character of the famous cigarière. "Carmen will never give in, she was born free, she will die free", the heroine says to Don José at the end of the opera. This irrepressible freedom, coupled with the need to live ever more intensely on the razor's edge, is captured in Calixto Bieito's staging like no other. From Mérimée's character, Carmen retains in Bieito's work the deeply Iberian contours and the burning temperament of a woman who lives by petty trafficking. But the rebellious bird is fundamentally of our time. A seductive and unsubmissive vamp, a witness to male and societal brutality, she drives at high speed, in a hurry to exist.