Bizet, Carmen, 1875

Adults edition

An opera that shocked Paris

Georges Bizet was thirty-six when Carmen opened at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875. The libretto — the opera’s text — by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy adapts a novella by Prosper Mérimée: Carmen, a headstrong cigarette-factory worker in Seville, leaves the soldier Don José for the bullfighter Escamillo, and Don José kills her outside the arena while the crowd cheers inside.

The first audiences found its characters too ordinary and its ending too raw. The critics were unkind. Bizet died three months later, on 3 June 1875, without knowing that Carmen would go on to become one of the most performed operas in the world.

The Toreador song arrives in Act 2. Escamillo sings to his admirers about the applause of the arena — the original words are Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre — and everyone joins in on the refrain. Once you know it, you will hear it in films, adverts and cartoons for the rest of your life.

Kids edition (4–8)

The song of the bullfighter

In Seville, a long time ago, there lived a soldier named Don José. He fell in love with a brave woman called Carmen. But Carmen loved freedom more than anyone who asked her to stay.

Carmen left Don José for Escamillo. Escamillo is a torero — that is the person who faces the bull in the arena. When he walks into a café, everybody wants to hear his song. Listen to it: it is proud, loud and easy to remember. You will start humming it before dinner.

Word of the day

Aria

An aria is a song for one voice in an opera, where a character says what they feel while the action pauses. The Toreador song is Escamillo’s great moment — a piece you will hear in every quiz we set about this issue.