The Garden of Learning

Arts & Letters

Which opera by Bizet features the Toreador Song?

  • Carmen
  • The Pearl Fishers
  • Faust

The answer is Carmen. Premiered 1875.

Carmen, which failed at its 1875 premiere and killed its composer's confidence - the audience was scandalised by a heroine who is a factory worker and a smuggler, who chooses her lovers and refuses to be owned, and who is murdered on stage by a man who cannot accept being left.

Bizet died three months later at 36, of a heart condition, believing it a failure. It became one of the most performed operas in the world within a few years, and he never knew.

The music also carries a piece of misattribution he was blamed for. The Habanera is based on a song by the Spanish-Basque composer Sebastián Yradier, which Bizet took for a folk tune; when told otherwise he added a credit in the score. Nietzsche later used Carmen as a stick to beat Wagner with, praising its brightness and brevity against what he had come to regard as German fog - which is a considerable afterlife for an opera its composer thought had flopped.