Carmen Backstage Pass

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Carmen
A Selected Cultural and Historical Timeline
A Burial At Ornans is a painting of 1849–50 by Gustave Courbet, and one of
the major turning points of 19th-century French art.
1850 1860 1871 1875 1887
At age 27, Jane Addams attends a bullfight on
a trip to Madrid. At first enthralled, she is later
disgusted by the bloody spectacle. She will write in
her memoir that the experience will influence her to
spend her life helping others. Addams will become
one of the most influential social reformers of her
time and will found Hull House in Chicago.
Gustave Courbet ushers in the Realist movement in art with his
painting A Burial at Ornans. Courbet and other realist painters
depict ordinary people in their paintings, a departure from the
idealized, romantic or grandiose historical works of art that
had been the norm. A similar movement in literature is already
underway. Realist writers include Honoré de Balzac, Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. Mérimée’s Carmen
falls within the realist tradition.
Henri Meilhac meets Ludovic Halévy. Together they will write the
libretto for Carmen as well as many others over the course of a
twenty-year collaboration.
Chicago’s first opera house burns down in the
Great Chicago Fire. The building, which was
built in 1865 by a business magnate who wanted
to bring a great opera hall to the Windy City.
The hall hosted the 1868 Republican National
Convention, which nominated General Ulysses S.
Grant for president of the United States.
Carmen scandalizes audiences at its premiere at the
Opéra-Comique in Paris.
Crosby Opera House
Addams is honored in the ‘Famous
Americans Series’ postal Issues of 1940.
Believing his opera to be a failure, Bizet dies at the
age of 36—just three months after Carmen opens.