Bizet’s Carmen has such a surefire story and score that any performance is almost guaranteed to impact an audience. It was the composer’s music that carried an unexciting and sometimes dull rendition at Florentine

 “Carmen is a woman meant only for love and death.” These were the ominous words that Prosper Merimee used to describe the coarse Gypsy character he authored in his grungy 1845 novella. Yet Carmen’s name would soon...