Dueling Carmens in Madrid

The notion that Spanish audiences and critics rejected Carmen as an exoticist abomination is interrogated in Chapter 3, which investigates the opera’s arrival in Madrid during the 1887–88 season, and its ultimate embrace by local audiences. Carmen’s debut in the Spanish capital was surrounded by controversies, including a protracted legal dispute over performance rights between Madrid’s two leading lyric theaters, the Teatro Real and the Teatro de la Zarzuela. These events coincided with significant debates over Spanish cultural identity, and the translation of Carmen into Spanish for adaptation as a zarzuela exposed the fault lines between Bizet’s vision of Spain and local concerns about self-representation.