Carmen

Bizet’s Carmen is a staple of the repertoire of the majority of opera houses worldwide. It is extremely popular owing to the music, abounding in torrential rhythms, engrossing melodies and bewitching songs of the beautiful Gypsy, as well as to the overwhelming power of the passions depicted in the story.

Carmen was first presented in Prague in 1880, at the Estates Theatre. The National Theatre staged it on 3 January 1884, shortly after its opening, as the very first foreign opera. In our new production, the story of Don José, a soldier who falls madly in love with the Gypsy Carmen, is retold by the German director Grischa Asagaroff.