Scheduled premiere: 7 March 2025
Being Carmen is not a choice, but a matter of fate. After all, if a beautiful Romani girl is born with a demonic charm and desires to break free from her current life—among the quick-tempered working women, rough soldiers preying on them, and loud bullfighters—what else is there left for her to do than to unleash her seductive power, which she wields both instinctively and masterfully: teasing, defying and retaliating. She is available, yet entirely aloof. She captivates every man with her femininity and untamable sensuality, successfully challenging male dominance until she finally surrenders her heart. This deviation, the abandonment of her principles, and the ‘stripping away’ of her true self are fleeting, but this love proves fatal for her. Try as she may, she cannot escape the man who would give up everything for her, leaving her with one final move. Carmen and Don José, caught in the dual game of attraction and repulsion, remain adversaries throughout, thus bringing on mutually assured destruction at each other’s hands.
The opera, based on the novel of the same name by Prosper Mérimée and adapted by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, is brought to the Debrecen stage by Kossuth Prize-winning director Tamás Juronics.
