Bizet gave his opera Carmen the totality of his genius in creating characters whose fates are clear from the start but whose transformation and journey to that sad end are still compelling. Ever since its premiere in 1875, Carmen has held the stage, justifying its fame with thousands upon thousands of performances in the last one hundred and thirty-four years. The danger with Carmen is in its familiarity. Even the occasional opera-goer has probably heard all the music of Carmen at one time or another either in films, on television or in the popular orchestra suites that are re-cycled again and again in pops concerts. But, what redeems Carmen from becoming background music is live performance in the theater. There is also a thread in this opera which goes back to the beginning of our season. It is Mozart and we began our 89th season with his near perfect comedy The Marriage of Figaro. The scholar Winton Dean points out that Bizet revered Mozart above all other composers and emulated him in how he evolved the drama of Carmen in musical terms. It is a combination of passionate involvement with dramatic detachment, and like Mozart each individual character is able to maintain his or her own identity in ensembles.