Aragonaise (Carmen Suite no. 1)

Carmen reached the stage of the Opéra-Comique on 3 March 1875 and unsettled its audience: a heroine who works in a cigarette factory and is stabbed to death in front of the public was not what that house existed for. Bizet died three months later, aged thirty-six, without seeing the work established. The orchestral suites drawn from the score were assembled afterwards, largely by his friend Ernest Guiraud, and carried the music into concert halls that had not yet seen the opera. The Aragonaise, which opens the first suite, is the entr'acte before the final act — a Spanish dance over drone and tambourine.