B'Rock Orchestra / Choeur de Chambre de Namur / René Jacobs

Finally, after more than 150 years, the true premiere of Carmen! Georges Bizet’s magnum opus may have been one of the most famous operas in the repertoire for centuries, but this scandalous tale of passion, love and death has never yet been performed as the composer actually wrote it. Because at the premiere in 1875, theatre directors demanded modifications to make the music more accessible… admittedly with a number of iconic melodies full of southern colour as a result. Bizet created a mythical femme fatale, through a mix of exotic fantasies and passionate desires. She embodied the 19^th-century Parisian bourgeoisie’s secret yearning for the free life. This radical striving for freedom continues to intrigue us to this day.

Conductor René Jacobs also became fascinated by Carmen and resolved to seek out the original version of Bizet’s masterpiece. For this new concert production, he takes the 1874 score as his starting point. Together with B'Rock Orchestra and an impressive cast, he reveals how groundbreaking Bizet’s ‘inaccessibly candid writing’ must once have sounded. An all-too-familiar classic as you never could have heard it before.