FULL CARMEN naissance d’un mythe Documentary France 2025 Elina Garanca, Roberto Alagna

Created exactly 150 years ago, it is by far the most performed French opera in the world. Its heroine, an independent, rebellious, and passionate woman, has become an icon of freedom and love, and a figure ripe for the most modern reinterpretations. Its brilliantly orchestrated score is known on every continent… However, Carmen , considered too inappropriate by the bourgeois audience of the Opéra-Comique, received a frosty reception on the evening of its Parisian premiere, March 3, 1875. Shattered by scandal, its author died three months later of exhaustion and spite, at only 36 years old, without knowing the fate of his ultimate masterpiece, which was already preparing to triumph on European stages…

Wildly romantic
This rich documentary offers a fascinating musical journey: from its genesis to its countless contemporary interpretations, it delves into the history, itself wildly romantic, of an absolute monument of opera. Between archives and extracts from its most beautiful performances, the speakers follow one another to make Carmen speak and offer analyses that testify to its great modernity, in its form as in its subject. Musicologist Hervé Lacombe discusses the importance of Célestine Galli-Marié, the first performer of the title role, without whom the famous habanera (” Love is a rebel bird “) would never have seen the light of day; conductor Louis Langrée, director of the Opéra-Comique, passionately comments on the score; singers Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna, who together played unforgettable Carmen and Don José, evoke the thousand and one nuances of their roles. Finally, sociologist Margot Giacinti offers a political perspective on a heroine with a resolutely feminist vein, whose tragic end, in its modern transpositions, carries a denunciation of the mechanisms of femicide.

Quoted from ARTE