Carmen is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the "Habanera" and "Seguidilla" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias.
Poster by Prudent-Louis Leray for the 1875 première
Célestine Galli-Marié as Carmen
Lithograph of act 1 in the premiere performance, by Pierre-Auguste Lamy, 1875
Magdalena Kožená and Jonas Kaufmann at the Salzburg Festival 2012
Georges Bizet was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire.
Bizet photographed by Étienne Carjat (1875)
Part of the Paris Conservatoire, where Bizet studied from 1848 to 1857 (photographed in 2009)
The Villa Medici, the official home of the French Académie in Rome since 1803
The Théâtre Historique in Paris, one of the homes of the Théâtre Lyrique company, pictured in 1862