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Written as a novel by Prosper Mérimée and later adapted for the opera by Georges Bizet, Carmen represents one of the first examples of European romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century and its ongoing fascination with Orientalizing Spain: those lands in the south of Europe that these artists described—without ever having set foot there—as unknown, savage and sensual, inhabited by the “other.” In his music, Bizet used tactics similar to those deployed by 19th-century writers and artists in their novels, travel diaries and paintings: through a pastiche of recycled images, he synthesized a confusion of identities—even those that might appear diametrically opposed—into a single consolidated truth.
The essentializing paradigms established in the opera still persist, reinforced in staging and picturesque dances, in Moorish sets and Manila shawls, and in Bizet’s musical arrangements, which used a wide range of motives vaguely codified as ‘Spanish,’ including Basque folk songs and…
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Press Release
Written as a novel by Prosper Mérimée and later adapted for the opera by Georges Bizet, Carmen represents one of the first examples of European romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century and its ongoing fascination with Orientalizing Spain: those lands in the south of Europe that these artists described—without ever having set foot there—as unknown, savage and sensual, inhabited by the “other.” In his music, Bizet used tactics similar to those deployed by 19th-century writers and artists in their novels, travel diaries and paintings: through a pastiche of recycled images, he synthesized a confusion of identities—even those that might appear diametrically opposed—into a single consolidated truth.
The essentializing paradigms established in the opera still persist, reinforced in staging and picturesque dances, in Moorish sets and Manila shawls, and in Bizet’s musical arrangements, which used a wide range of motives vaguely codified as ‘Spanish,’ including Basque folk songs and…






























































