Discover on screen the lyrical and choreographic masterpieces of the Paris National Opera. Operas from the 2014-2015 season of the Paris National Opera will be screened in the brand new Theatre of Alliance française de Toronto.

Violent passion crushed by a blazing Spanish sun; Philippe Jordan conducts Bizet’s masterpiece for its long-awaited return to the Paris Opera.

Seville, Spain. Arrested after a scuffle, Carmen, a fiery gypsy, seduces the corporal Don José, Micaëla's fiancé, and promises her love if he lets her escape. Don José releases Carmen, and is jailed in turn for allowing her to flee. He finds her two months later among a band of smugglers. To win her love, José has become a deserter and, obsessed by his passion, he followers her, devoured by his jealousy.

Music needs to be “Mediterraneanized”. That is what Nietzsche wrote – in French! – after hearing Carmen for the twentieth time. He was grateful that Bizet, ten years after “Tristan”, had composed its antithesis—even its antidote. Far from the heady aura of the Wagnerian ideal, Bizet had brought to the stage of the Opéra-Comique a deadly passion, violently revealed and crushed by the Spanish sun. The philosopher saw its as a revelation and deliverance. “The work has retained Mérimée's logically moving passion, concise lines, and implacable precision. Above all, it possesses what is distinctive to hot countries, namely, the dryness of the air. A different sensuality, a different sensibility, a different, and more confident gaiety speaks there. The music is gay, but this is no French or German gaiety. It’s gaiety is African. Blind fate weighs down on her, her happiness is brief, sudden, merciless. Then, finally, love; love re-transposed into its original nature! Love conceived as afatum, a fatality, cynical love, innocent, cruel! Love, harbinger of war; the mortal hatred of the sexes its very principle.”.

Opera in four acts by Georges Bizet (1875)

Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy

Based on the short story by Prosper Mérimée

Conductor: Philippe Jordan

Director:Yves Beaunesne

Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus

Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine / Paris Opera Children’s Chorus

Nikolai Schukoff, Don José

Ludovic Tézier, Escamillo

Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Le Dancaïre

François Piolino, Le Remendado

François Lis, Zuniga

Alexandre Duhamel, Morales

Anna Caterina Antonacci, Carmen

Genia Kühmeier, Micaela

Olivia Doray, Frasquita

Louise Callinan, Mercedes

Philippe Faure, Lillas Pastia

Frédéric Cuif, Un Guide

Presented by Alain Duault

Film director: François Roussillon

3hrs 17 mins plus one interval