Three notes on Bizet's French opera "Carmen"

Relevant plot details for this class

Set in Seville, Spain around the year 1830. Don José encounters Carmen, a gypsy, and is seduced by her from his honorable post as a soldier and from his true love. He joins Carmen's smugglers group but cannot control his jealousy. In this context, Carmen chooses the bull-fighter Escamillo over Don José. In the final scenes, near Seville's bull-ring, Escamillo arrives at the arena, with Carmen as his companion. — We will see this last scene, and listen to the lyrics of a second act scene where Escamillo displays through full-throated and proud singing, his masculinity as a bull-fighter, in order to win Carmen's heart.

Lyrics for "Toreador's Song" (from classicalmusic.about.com)

Your toast, I can give it to you
Sirs, sirs, for along with the soldiers
Yes, the Toreros, can understand;
For pleasures, for pleasures
They have combats!
The arena is full,
it is the feast day!
The arena is full, from top to bottom;
The spectators are losing their minds,
The spectators began a big fracas!
Apostrophes, cries, and uproar grow to a furor!
Because it is a celebration of courage!
It is the celebration of people with heart!
Let's go, en guard! Let's go! Let's go! Ah!
Toreador, en guard! Toreador, Toreador! And dream away, yes, dream in combat,
That a black eye is watching you,
And that love awaits you,
Toreador, love awaits you!
And dream away, yes dream in combat,
That a black eye is watching you
And may love await you,
Toreador, love await you!

Note on "black eye" that appears in that song

One of the lines from the libretto of Caremen, within "Toreador's Song" is:

"That a black eye is watching you,"

That reference to "black eye" is all-important because it shows Carmen, the gypsy woman, the exotic seductress, as the destination of desire of the men in the story. Lust leads outside Christian values into a dark and dangerous world, a basic position of many Western romances. Here is the quote from the original French novel by Prosper Merimee, when Don Jose described Carmen's beauty. The "black eye" of the opera is the "wolf's eye" of the novel.

"I very much doubt that Senorita Carmen was of pure Gypsy stock; at any rate, she was infinitely prettier than any other woman of her race I had ever encountered. According to the Spaniards, for a woman to be beautiful she must have thirty positive qualities; or, to put it another way, it must be possible to apply to her ten adjectives each of which describes three parts of her person. For instance, she must have three things that are dark: dark eyes, dark eyelashes, and dark eyebrows; three that are delicate: her hands, her lips, and her hair; and so forth-for the rest, see Brantome. My Gypsy-girl could not lay claim to such perfection. Her skin, though perfectly smooth, was nearly the colour of copper. Her eyes were slanting, but remarkably wide; her lips rather full, but finely chiselled, affording a glimpse of teeth whiter than blanched almonds. Her hair, perhaps rather coarse, and black with a blue sheen like a raven's wing, was long and shining. Not to weary you with too lengthy a description, I will sum her up by saying that for every fault she had a quality which was perhaps all the more striking from the contrast. She had a strange, wild beauty, a face that was disconcerting at first, but unforgettable. Her eyes in particular had an expression, at once voluptuous and fierce, that I have never seen on any human face. 'Gypsy's eye, wolf's eye' is a phrase Spaniards apply to people with keen powers of observation."