Their aim was to develop a working score based on those first Parisian performances that could be used by directors and creative professionals to inform new interpretations of the opera. The performance urtext edition of the Carmen vocal score, co-edited by Professor Rowden and Professor Richard Langham Smith, used manuscripts, performance scores, libretti and staging manuals from the original Parisian productions. While there have been many adaptions over the years, none of them have reproduced the score of the Parisian premiere.” Bizet wrote Carmen as an opéra-comique, which included both spoken and sung text, and, after his death, it was adapted into a fully sung version.

Professor Rowden says, “ Carmen is the iconic French opera from that period, the one that is performed the most. Due to Carmen's lifestyle on the margins of society, José reluctantly takes up with smugglers but when he loses Carmen’s affections, he reacts violently and murders her outside the bullring where the triumphs of her new lover, the toreador Escamillo, resound. The opera is set in Seville and tells the story of Carmen, a young, independent gypsy woman who falls in love with a volatile soldier, Don José. It had a rocky reception in Paris before becoming one of the world’s most performed operas. Going back to the original performance: a new scoreīizet’s Carmen was first performed in Paris in 1875. She did her doctoral thesis on Massenet, (a contemporary of Bizet’s) and is now regarded as a leading authority on opera and nineteenth-century France. It was there she developed an interest in French opera that would go on to influence her career. Before starting her postgraduate studies, Professor Rowden spent a year in Paris working as an au pair for two professional singers.

Carmen opera first performance