In Georges Bizet's Carmen--the latest volume in the Oxford Keynotes series--author Nelly Furman explores the evolution of Carmen's story and its meaning illuminating how the titular heroine has maintained her status as a universally recognizable cultural icon.

Standard Version with sung recitatives-Although almost unanimously condemned by contemporary Parisian critics for its overt sexuality and graphic final scene Carmen ultimately reached the public in a way that perhaps no other opera has. Bizet's aim (with Meilhac andHalevy who wrote the libretto) had been to transform the flaccid moralistic bourgeois genre of opéra comique into a more sophisticated type of staged work and he seems to have suceeded in Carmen. Each character has a musicalsignificance and a unique expressive idiom the ultimate example being the dangerous exotic sensual Carmen herself depicted by an exotic and sinewy chromatic motive that also implies the insurmountable power of fate. In aclassic plot device she is contrasted with the 'good girl' of the opera Micaela whose main aria is set in the ternary form of the elevated bel canto French Grand Opera aria to imply her traditionally 'ladylike' retiring nature.Don José's musical styles reflect different levels in his descent from dutiful soldier to the underworld of obsession.This is the Schirmer edition of the Libretto in the original French with an English translation by Ruthand Thomas Martin.

The musical story of a gypsy girl the bullfighter and a soldier who vie for her favors. From it's debut in 1875 it remains one of the most frequently performed and best-loved works in the repertoire. This authoritative publication presents one of the finest early editions of the Carmen Vocal Score - the classic Schirmer edition of 1895 in the original French with a complete English singing version by Dr. Theodore Baker.