Deutsche Oper Berlin - Carmen

Georges Bizet’s CARMEN was a deliberate and direct affront to the Romantic operatic tradition. The fiercely independent spirit of the eponymous heroine was the polar opposite of the passive suffering of the female characters that had populated the opera stage up to that point. Yet CARMEN is anti-Romantic in a larger sense: Bizet’s opera presents a world in which love as a feeling between two people is out of place and has long been supplanted by sex and violence. Carmen and Escamillo, the torero, are emblematic of this new society, where survival of the fittest is the only law that counts, a world where Don José, with his bourgeois ideal of love, remains an oddity, doomed to fail. With his clear-eyed view of the bleakness of the human condition Bizet lines up with novelist Emile Zola. In a rejection of the stereotypical image peddled by many productions, Bizet’s Spain casts the ugliness of poverty in a true light.

duration: 3 hrs / 1 interval

program

Carmen
Georges Bizet (1838 – 1875)

Oper in vier Akten
Libretto von Henri Meilhac und Ludovic Halévy
nach der Novelle von Prosper Mérimée
Uraufführung am 3. März 1875 in Paris
Premiere an der Deutschen Oper Berlin am 20. Januar 2018

In französischer Sprache mit deutschen und englischen Übertiteln
Einführung im Rang-Foyer rechts: 45 Minuten vor Vorstellungsbeginn
empfohlen ab 14 Jahren

Place

On September 24, 1961 the Opernhaus that had been inaugurated in 1912 and destroyed during the War was reopened as Deutsche Oper Berlin. Ever since it has been Berlin´s largest and Germany´s second largest music theatre, featuring among the most modern institutions in Europe. The straightforward and elegant building that was realized by architect Fritz Bornemann (he also conceived the America Memorial Library and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, a. o.) seats 1.859 and guarantees a maximum viewing and hearing experience for every visitor.