Returning to a reading of Mérimée’s Lettres d’Espagne, less for details that infiltrated both the novella and the libretto, and more for an overall impression of the Spain he visited in the 1830s, we realise that an over-arching sense of the text’s cultures of violence emanates from all four acts of the opera. The extraordinary number of weapons mentioned in the novella, and those retained in the opera, were clearly deliberately inserted to maintain the threat of violence throughout. There is also a sense of the unjust distribution of wealth in Andalusia, which was seen as justifying banditry, smuggling and wrecking. Above all it is clear that this constant background of imminent violence, along with its unpredictability, excited northern travellers to Spain rather than repelling them, and that Mérimée was no exception. He captured this undercurrent in his Lettres and skilfully injected a similar character into his Carmen of ten years later. Study of the libretto reveals that the librettists made some attempt to preserve these darker sides, even though detractors see the opera as a trivialised transformation of Mérimée’s original. In each of the four acts of the opera there are moments of violence either spontaneous or premeditated. Listen to Bizet’s music in that context and maybe the opera appears a little more sinister.

Imminent Violence in Mérimée’s Visits to Spain

As the Lettres evolve there is a distinct move from observation to imagination.Yet even in the description of the bullfight in the first lettre, Mérimée details his emotions as he approaches his first corrida, moving from a fear that he will not be able to endure the ‘free-flow of blood’ to his confession that after he had witnessed the death of the first bull ‘he never looked back’. Of the different types of tauromachic spectacle, he immediately sided with the fully fledged bullfight – which he terms ‘la tragédie’ – rather than the bull-running, such as was (and is) done in Pamplona and the south of France, where there was only minor danger to the men.

Before travelling to Madrid in November 1845, Mérimée had written to his companion and guide Calderón asking him to reserve him a place ‘surrounded by informed aficionados’ at a corrida (if there were to be one during his stay).