Carmen

Few operas have seized the world's imagination as completely as Carmen. Georges Bizet's tale of passion and destruction in the heat of Andalusia — in which the untameable gypsy Carmen seduces the soldier Don José into abandoning everything he has, only to discard him for the charismatic toreador Escamillo — is a study in obsession, freedom, and fatal love. Its score, from the hypnotic Habanera to the blazing Toreador Song, is among the most gloriously melodic in all of opera. The Royal Opera House presents this most popular of operas in a new production by director Damiano Michieletto, whose theatrically vivid approach promises to illuminate the work's dangerous passions afresh.

Michieletto, acclaimed for productions at La Fenice, Glyndebourne, and opera houses across Europe, brings to Carmen a sharp dramatic eye and the ability to make every theatrical choice count. Bizet's opera, so scandalous at its 1875 premiere that the composer is said to have died not knowing whether it would succeed, has since been performed more times at Covent Garden alone than almost any other work in the repertoire. This new staging offers the chance to rediscover why — with all the resources of the Royal Opera and Royal Opera House Orchestra at its command.