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The Gypsy free spirit Carmen is one of the most mesmerizing characters in opera. When French composer Georges Bizet (1838-1875) decided to break from operatic tradition to focus on more proletarian characters, he turned to exotic southern Spain for his inspiration. Carmen first came to life in the 1845 novella by Prosper Mérimée, but she found immortality in Bizet’s music. Even if you’re not an opera buff, you’ll instantly recognize “La Habanera,” Carmen’s flirtatious song in Act I and the “Toréador Song” in Act II sung by the cocky bullfighter Escamillo.

In the libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, Carmen and her smuggler friends proved a little too real for the proper Parisians who first saw the opera performed in March 1875. Alas, Bizet died a few months later thinking that the opera was a flop. A year later it did boffo box office in Vienna, and the story of the iconic femme fatale became one of the most performed operas in history. Yet the character of Carmen transcends opera. Modern Spanish women embrace her as one of the earliest symbols of a free woman who lived life on her own terms, whatever the cost.

Even today it doesn’t take much imagination to picture Carmen strutting through the streets of Sevilla, her skirts swirling about her ankles. The fictional Gypsy remains such a vivid presence, in part, because the sites of her imagined escapades—and ultimate demise—are embedded into the fabric of the city. You can seek them out on a private tour offered by Sevilla Official Tours (complete with opera singers providing the soundtrack), download a free app for your phone, or simply follow a walking tour map from the city tourist office.

The opera opens at the Royal Tobacco Factory, an imposing Neoclassical building just outside the Puerta de Jerez that is now part of the Universidad de Sevilla. In the early sixteenth century, Spain became the first European country to manufacture tobacco, and this mid-eighteenth-century factory amply demonstrates the importance of tobacco to Spain’s economy. When it opened, it was the second largest building in the country.

By the time that Carmen was written, almost all of the four thousand workers were women. Cigars rolled by the cigarreras were considered superior to cigars rolled by men. Popular belief held that the women rolled the tobacco on their inner thighs—an image so frankly sexual and evocative that it no doubt sold many a cigar. The factory did nothing to discredit the image, although it’s pretty much impossible to roll a good cigar without using both hands.

As the opera opens, cigarreras on a break are smoking and flirting with soldiers at the factory gates. As the most vivacious, Carmen is the center of attention. She immediately captures the interest of corporal Don José, who has just promised to marry a sweet peasant girl. When the women return to the factory, a fight erupts between Carmen and another worker. When his superior orders Don José to take Carmen to jail, he lets her escape and is sent to jail himself.

This being opera, the story is quickly complicated by subplots about smuggling plans and mountain hideaways—none of which really detracts from the central narrative of love thwarted and spurned. Much of the drama of Act II takes place in the old Judería, or Jewish Quarter, where Carmen and her smuggler pals could easily hide in the narrow streets and where she and her Gypsy friends could sing and dance and entertain soldiers in the taverns. The opera was fiction, but spots such as Restaurante Corral del Agua on Calle Agua stand in for the tavern where Carmen once again sees Don José and where she meets and enchants the dashing bullfighter Escamillo.

I don’t think I need to issue a spoiler alert when I reveal that the love triangle doesn’t end well. The final scene takes place outside the Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla, one of the oldest and most storied bullrings in Spain. Dressed in silk finery, Carmen arrives on Escamillo’s arm. As he enters the ring, she is detained by Don José, who implores her to leave with him. She declares her love for Escamillo and—as cheers for the bullfighter rise from the ring—Don José pulls a knife and stabs his beloved.

Although Carmen sprang from the imaginations of a band of Frenchmen, Sevillanas proudly claim her as their own. A bronze statue of the fiery Gypsy stands across from the bullring on the banks of the Río Guadalquivir where her gaze across the Paseo de Colón forever beholds the spot of her violent death.

“Many people think, ‘what an end!’” says guide Carmen Izquierdo of Sevilla Official Tours. “But she was a strong personality. She preferred to die rather than lose her freedom.”

TOURS