SOURCE: "Carmen's Transfiguration from Mérimée to Bizet: Beyond the Image of the Femme Fatale," in Nottingham French Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, Autumn, 1993, pp. 48-54.

In the following essay, Edwards and Edwards observe the manner in which the title character of Mérimeé 's Carmen is transformed from a stereotypical femme fatale to a fully-realized and self-defining individual in Georges Bizet's drama of the same name.

The 1875 première of Georges Bizet's Carmen at the Opéra Comique in Paris was a scandale du théâtre. Audience and critics alike were startled by Bizet's musical innovations and appalled by the selection of Prosper Mérimée's notorious femme fatale as a subject for operatic treatment. Thundered the reviewer for the Revue des deux mondes, ' Il y a de ces choses dont un écrivain du talent et de la force de Mérimée peut tirer parti dans...