In the formation of their libretto the two writers had plundered many sources, taking their cue from Mérimée, who had also borrowed freely. Bizet – transforming the libretto into an opéra-comique – did much the same. He found models in libraries, sheet music, anthologies, previous ballets and operas, possibly concerts, and perhaps consulted acquaintances who knew about Spanish music – there were, after all, plenty around in Paris. His over-arching aim was surely to succeed in writing a piece that would become standard repertoire.

For anyone to succeed as a composer of opéras-comiques, using a serious story like Carmen meant steering a precarious course, on the one hand somehow preserving the text’s casticismo – the Spanish ‘authenticity’ (particularly the passion and violence, which are the essence of the tale) – and on the other satisfying Opéra-Comique audiences’ unquenchable thirst for the formulaic (and sometimes saccharine) numbers they knew and loved. Warning shots had been fired across Bizet’s bows by the directorate, particularly by the co-director du Locle, but he had managed to appease them. The underlying commitment of the librettists to Mérimée’s original has already been established. Certainly the process was not as simple as the chapter plan of this book might imply: that the novella was turned into a libretto, then the libretto turned into an opera. There must have been meetings, collaborations, arguments one suspects, and eventually joint results, though we have few extant documents with which to chart this process.There was also literary input from Bizet himself, for example in the revision of the text for the Habanera.

The ‘number opera’ formula (the opéra à numéros) helped Bizet considerably. He could use the gaps provided by the intervening acted sections to move effortlessly from numbers full of ‘local colour’ to music more familiar and intimate, confections in the styles loved by the bourgeois audiences and the chaperoned-betrothed who were the central part of the Opéra’s livelihood. Structure was as important as it was to the librettists and Bizet’s choices between genres were crucial for the opera’s success. The musical ways of structuring the story from the libretto, and fashioning it into numbers preserving its Spanishness while still satisfying Opéra-Comique conventions, required considerable skills; luckily, Bizet had several at his disposal.