Carmen

Carmen was Bizet's last opera, taken from Prosper Mérimée's novella, and its premiere at the Opéra-Comique on 3 March 1875 caused a scandal — the theatre's family audience was not prepared for the subject. Bizet died three months later, before the work's success abroad. He had gone to Spanish colour before, in Vasco de Gama, La jolie fille de Perth and L'Arlésienne, and in Carmen used only three authentic Spanish melodies; one of them, a polo, underlies the prelude to the fourth act. The rest is his own invention in that idiom.