Carmen was first given in Stockholm at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1878 just three years after its Parisian premiere. The Swedish Carmen went on tour to Copenhagen and Kristiania, but within thirteen years the opera had been staged with a predominantly local casts also in the other three Nordic countries: Denmark in 1887, Finland in 1889 and Norway in 1891.

The opera arrived in the Nordic countries amidst fierce public debate between idealists and realists arguing about how art should represent woman: as a self-sacrificing and morally high-minded model for the nation-building project (especially in Finland and Norway), or realistically, as a modern troubled woman, such as Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

This chapter examines how the character of Carmen was enacted on the stage and the press reactions to her at this aesthetic and societal turning point of the fin de siècle. I argue, that the singers and critics participated in the ongoing debate about realism, gender equality and modernity. Amidst confusion at a time of aesthetic change, the will to take control of the issues at stake was still rooted in models and strategies from the past.