ty of diction, local color and strange settings, and over everything a cloak of sometimes cruel cynicism" (Bleiler 33). His writers, however, believed the public would not accept such things on stage. The OpTra Comique was "traditionally the scene of family outings" and Carmen's transgressive nature alone was enough to ensure the opera's rejection--in their opinion (Cooper 15). But Bizet had been attracted to the story by precisely the combination of qualities that alarmed his collaborators and he resisted them forcefully. An extant manuscript of the lyrics of the habanera that introduces Carmen shows that Bizet was compelled to replace some of their lines himself. HalTvy's version of this song was not only "much milder in tone and much farther from MTrimTe," he had originally wanted "to supply even 'tenderer' verses for Carmen's first song" (Dean 214-15).
One source of the writers' apprehension was the fact that in opTra-comique, "even more perhaps than elsewhere in the theater, women were expected to be gentle, biddable, always sinned against but never sinning" (Cooper 15-16). Carmen, however, was anything but biddable and Bizet, who was already imagining her music when he rewrote the habanera, was determined to retain her character because it was the center of his musical inspiration. This character was too complex to be toned down to fit the demands of conventional theatrical views of women. Conlon has noted that the original "shock of her unscrupulous, illegal and immoral behavior" has diminished since Bizet's times and hold that Carmen has become something of a hero because of her fatalistic, but brave, way of accepting "the rules of the game" (9).
The notion that Carmen's attitudes render her a hero, however, is complicated by the fact that this game was one of her own invention. This is mitigated, of course, by the fact that she was a woman remaking the rules in a patriarchal society--and this helps explain why ...