Despite a mixed critical reception after Carmen’s American premiere in New York City on 23 October 1878, the opera quickly became a mainstay of the repertoire in the United States. American reviewers described Carmen as wicked yet compellingly seductive, Micaëla as a paragon of virtue and Don José as a stereotypically violent but manly Spaniard. They framed the opera as a cautionary tale of the dire consequences when women abandoned their traditional social roles. A close reading of the performing materials rented to American opera companies in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Tams-Witmark Company reveals a performance tradition for Carmen which responded to and exaggerated the early critical reactions towards the main characters. Opera troupes used a combination of carefully placed cuts and stage pantomimes to perform an interpretation of the work that subtly tailored Bizet’s music to the American audience, which intensified Carmen’s vicious tendencies, highlighted Micaëla’s femininity and amplified Don José’s masculinity. The modifications to Carmen offer a case study that illustrates American operatic performance practices and illuminates issues of adaptation and cultural transfer in the transatlantic journey of European music to the United States.

Bizet’s Carmen had a major impact on Italian opera, yet its success was not easy or certain. The opera was significantly modified to suit Italian tastes, stripped of its key generic markers, translated and reinterpreted by Italian singers. These changes are more striking since the first Italian version of Carmen appears to have been made by the French, while the opera’s real popularity in Italy corresponds to the appearance of a second, Italianised version. At the same time, French singers, such as Célestine Galli-Marié, regularly performed the role in Italy, so the Italian version had many points of contact with the French performing tradition. The Italian version of Carmen inspired dialogues about the nature of realism’in the Italian press, and affected the realist composers of the giovane scuola (Puccini, Mascagni et al.). Carmen’s success helped turn its Italian publishers, the Casa Sonzogno, into major power brokers in Italian opera, and the opera became a key part of their corporate brand.

In 1902, the Théâtre royal de la Monnaie presented a new Carmen in replacement of its original production of 1876. Though the Monnaie’s managers, Kufferath and Guidé, officially aimed at a ‘reconstruction’ (reconstitution) of Bizet’s classic, stage manager Charles De Beer radically updated the mise en scène through such naturalistic features as multiple-level platforms and asymmetrical, panoramic stage sets. An instant hit, the staging enjoyed revivals until 1949 and transferred to four other Belgian venues. This chapter seeks to explain that remarkable success. Focusing on the scenography by Albert Dubosq, the author first outlines the Belgian background against which the new version made its mark. Analytical observations on the 1902 Carmen are then drawn, not just from historical photographs and newspaper reviews, but also from life-size replicas of Dubosq’s flats and drops surviving in Courtray. The essay concludes by contradicting a tenacious master-narrative, according to which operatic staging became stagnant in the naturalistic era; instead, numerous innovations were introduced within a traditional, illusionistic framework.

The British premiere of Carmen in May 1878 was an instant hit with both critics and the opera-going public, who were entranced by Bizet’s music and Minnie Hauk’s representation of the title role. This chapter focuses on the reception of Hauk’s performances, and on representations of Carmen by her immediate successors, Zelia Trebelli, Emily Soldene and Selina Dolaro. In an era when operatic heroines were expected by British audiences to be meek, virtuous and adoring, Carmen’s passion and sensuality subverted expectations, posing challenges for the singers who played her and redefining the character of the prima donna for Victorian audiences.

Why a transnational history of Carmen? Because Carmen is intrinsically born of – and about –migration and linguistic fluidity, and because Bizet’s opera has been transcended by the myth or symbol of Carmen, taken to mean many things in multiple contexts. This chapter lays the foundations for the rest of the book by highlighting the main sources – Mérimée’s novella, the opera libretto, its first stagings and scores – as well as challenging the precepts of a transnational history of opera, and attempts to weave the individual chapters together, draw out overlapping themes, challenge expected narratives, point up contradictions. In short, whether in relation to genre, singers or binary oppositions of geography, identity, morality and progress, the chapter outlines the main debates addressed and synthesises the kaleidoscopic nature of the findings of all contributors. From Spanish gypsies to French Hispanomania in music and dance, from Parisian reception to transnationalism in opera studies, from Parisian opéra-comique to international hybrid spectacle, this chapter signals the issues that are omnipresent in the performance and reception of Carmen at home and abroad.

Carmen made its debut in the Spanish Americas when the local networks of opera were at their apex, with a constant stream of singers from Europe and a desire for new repertoires outside the main staples of Italian opera. In this chapter, considering sources from across the region, we discuss four layers of Carmen’s reception in the Americas. First, the reception of the opera beyond the stage, in the form of vocal scores, arrangements for military bands and isolated numbers. Second, the perception of Carmen as a French opera, and the way it served as a vehicle for French opera companies in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Third, the idea of Carmen as Spanish, and how different countries considered that hispanicity as part of their own culture and theatrical expectations. Finally, we discuss how the habanera in Carmen was perceived as part of a larger contemporary debate on the transatlantic popularity of the habanera as a musical genre, its origins, ethnicity and its moral and musical character.

Despite mixed reactions to the first performance of Carmen on the Russian stage in 1878 in Saint-Petersburg, it rapidly became an indispensable part of the country’s operatic repertoire.

After the Revolution, the popularity of Carmen transcended the stage, lending its name to new perfumes and the Toreador’s tune to the ‘March of the Working-Peasants Army’. In theatre, meanwhile, new trends were aligning the opera with the tastes of proletarian audiences. Seemingly embodying the ideological triangle of realism, narodnost (closeness to the ‘people’) and – by some selective argumentation – optimism, Carmen provided a benchmark for new Soviet opera.

With Carmen’s popularity came the abstraction of the heroine from the operatic context. Borrowing from Shakespeare studies and the concept of ‘Hamletism’, this chapter will coin the term ‘Carmenism’ to refer to the tendency to interpret Carmen as a symbol, which in turn influences the interpretation of Carmen the opera, and thus keeps the music and its source alive for the appropriating nation or era. Through the prism of ‘Carmenism’ and using representative case studies, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how the various Russian/Soviet adaptations not only reflected the socio-political context of the country but also had a role in forming that culture.

Carmen was produced in Ireland and Brittany in 1878 when both populations were exploring questions of identity. In Ireland, the tension between the local inhabitants and their colonial masters was giving rise to Celtic nationalism. In Brittany, while regional identity was important, so too was the connection with wider French culture.

Breton productions relied largely on local forces, (the notable exception being Célestine Galli-Marié, the original Parisian Carmen), with careful preparation, rehearsal and advanced publicity. Brittany was fortunate in having publicly subsidised theatres and municipal support for singers, orchestras and choruses which facilitated productions. In contrast, Irish theatres were privately owned, depending largely on touring companies, usually from Britain. The impresario Mapleson, manager of the Italian Opera Company, had arranged to take his production with Minnie Hauk as Carmen from London to New York, but finding that theatres were available in both Dublin and Cork, seized the opportunity to present a short season in Ireland before embarking for America.

The critical reception was mixed, with good and bad reviews after every performance. Whereas the Irish Carmen was seen to reflect the rebellious spirit of the age, Carmen in Brittany followed the redemptive route of the religious pardon of local ritual.

Carmen was first given in Stockholm at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1878 just three years after its Parisian premiere. The Swedish Carmen went on tour to Copenhagen and Kristiania, but within thirteen years the opera had been staged with a predominantly local casts also in the other three Nordic countries: Denmark in 1887, Finland in 1889 and Norway in 1891.

The opera arrived in the Nordic countries amidst fierce public debate between idealists and realists arguing about how art should represent woman: as a self-sacrificing and morally high-minded model for the nation-building project (especially in Finland and Norway), or realistically, as a modern troubled woman, such as Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

This chapter examines how the character of Carmen was enacted on the stage and the press reactions to her at this aesthetic and societal turning point of the fin de siècle. I argue, that the singers and critics participated in the ongoing debate about realism, gender equality and modernity. Amidst confusion at a time of aesthetic change, the will to take control of the issues at stake was still rooted in models and strategies from the past.

This chapter explores the early performance history and reception of Carmen in New Orleans following its premiere in the city on 17 December 1879. While New Orleans had for long time been home to a resident French opera troupe – indeed, for a period of some thirty years, this was the only permanent opera company in North America – Carmen’s premiere there was given as part of a season mounted by a visiting Italian opera company, under the direction of Max Strakosch. Using local critics’ reflections on change and progress as a starting point, this chapter argues that Carmen’s somewhat cursory initial reception in New Orleans (followed by its swift adoption on the city’s stages in various forms) yields insights into both specifically local conditions and processes of operatic globalisation in the period. Their assessments of Carmen, set alongside other documents such as programme booklets, reveal a rupture with New Orleans’s operatic past in the post-Civil War period, and at the same time reflect fundamental changes in the broader operatic culture of the United States, as well as the wider internationalism of operatic performance in the late nineteenth century.

Following its premiere and two revivals (in 1883 and 1890), Carmen was given a fresh staging by the director of the new third Salle Favart, Albert Carré. Following the fatal and tragic fire of 1887, Carré’s mandate in the new theatre was to alternate works from the repertoire with world premieres. Thus Carmen and Manon inaugurated the new season (December 1898). By way of research, Carré journeyed to Spain, to Madrid, Seville and Grenada, accompagnied by the Opéra-Comique’s costume designer Charles Bianchini. The scenery, designed by Lucien Jusseaume, was also the fruit of the documents brought back by Carré in order to better portray the atmosphere of Mérimée’s novella. Carré’s production then held the Opéra-Comique stage, with only small modifications until c. 1972. Nevertheless, the 1875 production was performed in the provinces and abroad, most notably in French colonies in North Africa by the ‘Tournées d’Orient’ (1910–1920). This chapter demonstrates, therefore, how the two productions – both the original and Carré’s 1898 staging – rubbed shoulders over a long period, presenting co-existing images of Carmen: one, more dated, with scenery inspired by multiple sources; the other, more modern, where the protagonist confirms a model of modern woman.

There were no permanent professional opera companies in Australia in the nineteenth century. However, visits from touring companies were frequent, especially after the Gold Rush, when, as one critic put it, ‘all the glittering operatic repertoire of mid-nineteenth century Europe filled the antipodean air.’ In the period under consideration, there were many productions of Carmen by major touring companies and also by more ad hoc touring artists who joined up with local groups.  I have chosen to focus on the four most significant productions of the period.

The first production of Carmen was in 1879 by William Saurin Lyster’s opera company. This production established the opera’s popularity in Australia and was followed by a number of less satisfactory productions in the final decades of the century. In 1907, Lyster’s nephew, George Musgrove brought a German opera company to Australia who performed Carmen in German. This was followed by a spectacular performance by the Melba-Williamson company of 1911 and then perhaps the most professional productions to date, by English entrepreneur Thomas Quinlan’s touring companies (1912, 1913).

This chapter examines the controversy surrounding the opera and the critical response to the character of Carmen in light of the colonial desire for respectability.

This chapter focuses on the politics of Carmen reception in Prague between 1880 and 1945. During this period, Carmen was performed not only in Czech, at the National and Vinohrady Theatres, but also in German, at the Estates Theatre and later also the New German Theatre. Due to the opera’s enormous popularity, various Prague productions often featured famous international Carmen performers and notable conductors, such as Blech, Zemlinsky, and Szell. Prague’s critics discussed Czech and German performances of Carmen not only in terms of artistic issues, but Carmen criticism also became a site of nationalistic debates. Although Carmenis a French opera, in Prague, it was often discussed in connection to Czech and German cultural politics. Whereas a group of Czech and German critics approached Carmen as a progressive, proto-Czech or quasi-Germanic opera, other critical reactions were mostly negative, viewing it as too cosmopolitan and an immoral, commercial anathema to national art.

Poland’s loss of independence and the partition of its territory by the three neighbouring states (Russia, Austria and Prussia) had a significant influence on the development of musical life and institutions during the nineteenth century. In spite of some limitations, Polish theatres presented high artistic standards in Warsaw (Russian partition) and in Lviv (annexed by Austria). Krakow (part of the Austro-Hungarian empire) did not have a permanent opera stage, but the opera ensemble from Lviv was a frequent visitor.

From its first appearance on Polish stages, French opera – particularly the works of Meyerbeer and Massenet – was in competition with Italian works, as well as the German ones in the Prussian partition. Carmen was first staged in Warsaw in 1882, and then in Lviv and Krakow (both 1884). The libretto was translated into Polish, and translations of popular arias entered the repertoire of many soloists. This chapter will address the reception of Carmen in Poland, local and transnational influences on the circulation of operatic repertory and performance traditions, institutional collaboration and social and economic aspects of musical life at regional and European levels.