CARMEN

Conductor: František Babický
Director: Václav Věžník
Scene: Martin Višek
Costumes: Tomáš Kypta
Choreography: Jiři Horák
Choirmaster: Martin Vesely
Assistant of the director: Alena Žaloudková
Dramaturgist: Vojtěch Havlík
Musical training: Martin Biriucov, Tatiana Drybas, Elena Nagyová

In the list of Bizet´s works, we can find well near to thirty operas - an impressive number for a composer, who reached only to thirty-six years of his life. Nevertheless, there is the need to point out that only six of them were preserved in condition sufficient for performing, some of them could be taken just as drafts, others remained unfinished, some got lost or perhaps destroyed. Only five of those six were realized during Bizet´s life, and none of them had such success, which would ensure its author an international fame. In spite of that fact, Bizet still has an indisputable reputation as a great opera composer, and his Carmen as one of the most famous operas of the 19th century. Bizet's stage production was accompanied by misfortune: he was not lucky with librettos, with the critics, many of his operas came to nothing, not by his fault. This can be proved on the opera Don Rodrigue, which was began to compose by him in the course of the work on Carmen in 1873 according to the order of the Paris Opera. When the work was drafted in its fundamentals, the building of the Opera burnt on 28th October. Bizet returned to work on the previous order. The story of the passionate and liberal-minded Carmen, as it was described in the story of the same name by Prosper Mérimée, was chosen by the composer himself, and he also significantly contributed to the final form of the libretto, which was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. After exacting work, and especially very long and intense rehearsing which lasted nearly a half of a year, the opera was ready for the premiere, which took place on 3 March 1875 at Paris Opéra-Comique. Carmen was then accepted rather coolly, but certainly it was not a total failure which would have even resulted in Bizet's too early death, how it is often stated. The opera achieved 45 performances in the year of its premiere. In that same year, on 2nd May, he signed a contract of the presentment of Carmen in Vienna, for which he decided to set to music the original spoken dialogues as recitatives. Unfortunately, this didn´t happen in the end - the composer died on 3rd June 1875, three hours after the 33rd repetition of his most famous opera in Paris. Recitatives were finally arranged by Bizet´s friend Ernest Guiraud. The Vienna premiere on 23rd October 1875 meant a tremendous success, and the opera soon started its flight to the opera houses of the whole world – and it keeps to be one of the most popular operas ever until today.