/lit/ - Literature

>>12588568
In that case, is anyone else really bothered and troubled by Carmen? I saw it this past Fall in my city. I'd seen it before when I was much younger, but this was my first time seeing it in a while. I was very impressed by how beautiful it was, but it's also a really troubling opera for me.

I mean, Carmen essentially ruins Don Jose's life. She gets him thrown in jail, she convinces him to abandon his time in the army for life as a criminal, she makes him abandon Micaela, whom he would certainly have been happy with. And then she deserts him because she's fallen out of love with him, as though she doesn't have any responsibility for leading him to ruin.

Don Jose isn't blameless, either, because he's the one who takes what's clearly a fling and makes it into a huge obsession. But at the same time, I can't help but feel that Carmen bears some responsibility for her own fate. She, essentially, created the monster that winds up killing her. Is the whole opera a cautionary tale? Is Carmen meant to be a warning to women, that they shouldn't be like this?

Like I said, it's a really troubling opera for me, but I feel like that's a sign of its greatness.