Profusion and Parody in Barcelona

The cosmopolitan northern city of Barcelona played host to Carmen’s Spanish premiere in 1881, starring Célestine Galli-Marié, and although the opera failed to take root at this point, Barcelona’s status as a center of entertainment in a variety of Spanish genres and a keen purveyor of European trends set the stage for Carmen’s return in the late 1880s. This revival led to a proliferation of competing productions in the early 1890s, and a degree of popularity that inspired the composition of a successful parody, the género chico work Carmela (1891), which subverted the local color and melodies of Bizet’s opera for a Hispanic audience and toured Spain and the Americas for several years.