Carmen

Bizet's Carmen is set in 1840s Seville, and it follows a woman who insists on her own freedom in ways the world around her finds unacceptable. Carmen works in a cigarette factory, loves who she wants, and leaves without apology when she is done — which she eventually is, with the soldier Don José, in favor of the bullfighter Escamillo. Don José cannot accept this. Carmen's entrance aria, the Habanera — L'amour est un oiseau rebelle, love is a rebellious bird — remains, a century and a half later, one of the most dramatically powerful statements on desire in Western music. Bizet's score draws on Spanish musical forms to build a world that feels immediate and alive, and Carmen herself is one of the most completely realized characters in opera: not a symbol, but a specific woman making specific choices that the opera refuses to apologize for, even as it shows you the cost.