Name: Intermezzo
Start: 2026-04-30T19:00:00
Location: Semperoper Dresden

Bernhard Hansky

James Ley

Patrick Hahn

Clara Nadeshdin

Christoph Pohl

Ute Selbig

Sabine Brohm

Jürgen Müller

Martin-Jan Nijhof

Tilmann Rönnebeck

Sofia Savenko

Katharina Pittelkow

Erik Brünner

Anton Belyaev

Fabio Antoci

Alfred Mayerhofer

Michael Tucker

Axel Ranisch

Saskia Wunsch

Semperoper Dresden

Is Carmen’s gaze only to be compared with that of a wild animal? The French writer Prosper Mérimée explored this question in his novella Carmen, which was the basis for Georges Bizet’s (1838-1875) final opera, which premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875. Carmen’s air of seduction is both her weapon and her downfall, for in the end she dies at the hands of her jealous lover, Don José. Carmen refuses to be told what to do and certainly doesn’t want to be rescued by Don José in the shifting sands in front of the bullfighting arena. She prefers death to having her life decided by others. In the extremely popular and passionate “Habanera” aria, which is our first encounter with Carmen, she paints a picture of herself: “Love is a rebellious bird that none can tame.” Her indomitable desire for freedom is stamped in her DNA.

Carmen

First performed in Dresden in 1924, Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo provides all manner of insights into his turbulent married life.

Intermezzo