The Georges Bizet Opera Carmen

The Georges Bizet opera Carmen is part soap opera and part action adventure. The tale of the passionate and beautiful Gypsy Carmen and her obsessive and reckless lover Don Jose is set in Andalusia in the early 19th century. All of the passion and adventure that are Andalusia are symbolized in the love between and adventures of Carmen and Don Jose. The main theme of Bizet's work appears to be the fated nature of passion and recklessness. Within this theme, however, is one that most spectators associate with the opera, its focus on romance and unfulfilled love. For in the opera, Micaela's love for Don Jose is unrequited while the obsessive love of Don Jose for Carmen ends in her murder. This analysis will discuss Bizet's opera, comparing and contrasting it with Merimee's Carmen. Aspects of the opera that are more fully brought to live in Rosi's film version of Carmen will also be highlighted.

Bizet's opera features many characters and incidents missing from Prosper Merimee's Carmen. Merimee's Carmen is narrated for us while Don Jose waits for execution. He has killed the Gypsy girl Carmen, whose beauty and dancing bewitched him. When he leaves his regiment to be with her, Carmen's refusal to commit to him fills him with rage in the wake of his sacrifice. In a tragic ending, he kills Carmen. Merimee's use of language clearly defines setting and character. He corrects a misconception in his opening passage about Andalusia's geography. Later, he

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tic locations are featured through sets and even through song. Act Three opens by telling us we are in a "picturesque and wild spot" and Carmen maintains in song that if she and Don Jose were both in love "into the hills" they could ride (Bizet, 1990, p. 103; 99). The settings and images in both Merimee and Bizet reinforce the reckless (wars, smugglers, gypsies) and passionate (song, dance, foods) nature of the people of Andalusia and its landscape. This is also true in Rosi's film but with the power of cinema Rosi is able to achieve spectacular effects in creating Andalusia as a background character. His film uses moonlight, rich firelight, deep reds and yellows in ways that make the film glow like the passionate characters in the piece. His camera shows us lush, sun-drenched villages tucked into hillsides and a stark bullring with an elegant ballet that reinforces the high emotions exhibited by the characters. The impact of this is to help us understand how Carmen's beauty and passion against the beautiful and passionate backdrop of Andalusia could make Don Jose helpless in loving her. Rosi (1984) also provides an opening that is a series of slow-motion shows of a bloody and wounded bull in its last moments of its battle w

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