LA Opera's "Carmen"

I realized while watching "Carmen" on Sunday afternoon that it's amazing how its music has seeped into the crevices of culture. It's as if I know the sound of it before I realize the origin, every single time. And that's how it opened for me - first with the strains of the orchestra and then my brain thinking: "Oh yeah, that's from Carmen..."

Perhaps the same can be said about the story itself, one of love from passion, devotion, stupidity, and/or insanity, all of the above in which appears in stories elsewhere. It's not too hard to sink yourself into the love story/ies - the good of it and the tragic.

Inevitably, the show is fun, familiar, well-done, and fantastic for those very reasons. To forewarn, the run time for Georges Bizet's "Carmen" is 3 hours and 30 minutes with two intermissions. At first, when presented with this time frame, it appears daunting. After all, the average movie is about two hours long - if that. But with the familiar strains of this famous French opera, the comic elements, and a love story that's parts passion and parts women's lib - time flies with every enjoyable second.

Performances of Carmen continue at the LA Opera until December 14th.

-Charity Tran, ExperienceLA Web Coordinator