Niamh O’Sullivan on Carmen’s Habanera: ‘It’s scary. She’s straight in with the most famous aria in the opera’

The Salle Favart, home of the Opéra-Comique in Paris, is where the first performance of Georges Bizet’s Carmen took place, in 1875.

The theatre, which regarded itself as a family venue, was also known, and often pilloried, as a place where marriages were arranged. Parents seated a daughter at the front of a box, where, during the interval, prospective husbands could be interviewed.

Adolphe de Leuven, one of the theatre’s directors, pleaded with one of the librettists, Ludovic Halévy, not to have Carmen die on stage. No character, he said, had ever died in a show at the theatre.

The first Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marié, invested the sultry factory worker with a sensuality and independence that triggered an entirely different chorus of objections. When the opera finally entered the repertoire of the much larger Palais Garnier, in 1959 (no, the date is not a typo), Jane Rhodes launched her international career through the title role, in a lavish production that was sexy enough for her to be called “the Brigitte Bardot of opera”.

Irish National Opera’s new Carmen is the Cork mezzo-soprano Niamh O’Sullivan. She was contracted for the role after she appeared as Carmen’s friend Mercédès in INO’s 2022 production, at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, in Dublin.

“It’s crazy how far in advance we’re booked,” she says. “Some opera houses book five years in advance. I kind of know my schedule right now up till the end of 2029, which is great. I feel very lucky and honoured that that’s the case. Fergus Sheil” – INO’s artistic director – “knew it was a role that was coming soon in my career, so he said, ‘You’ll have done it already. Why not try it at home?’”

Is she at all like Carmen? “I think yes. With every role I do, I try to find a bit of me in them, so it doesn’t seem completely far away from me. I’ve been thinking about her and her independence. I feel I’m a very independent person. As an opera singer you kind of have to be. We’re alone a lot, and most of our lives we spend on the road on our own.

“I’m also very passionate, I’m also sensitive, and this is one of the things I try to get across when I play Carmen: I try to find that other side to her. She’s just a human being at the end of the day as well.

“So, yes, I do find a lot of similarities between us. Feeling closer to her, and relating to her a lot more, makes it much easier as an actor to bring that across to an audience.”

Does the independence cross over into wilfulness?

“The whole thing is about her wanting to be free and stay free. That’s the bottom line for Carmen. She won’t be controlled by anyone. No matter what, she will get her own way in the end, even when she knows she’s going to die. So there is an absolute wilfulness with her.”

Carmen’s Habanera, one of those numbers known to millions even though they wouldn’t be able to put names to them, was one of the first arias O’Sullivan studied.

“It’s the scariest aria, I would say. Because there is nothing else before it. She’s just straight in with the most famous aria in the opera. I knew it and I always wanted to sing it, but I thought maybe I was too young and hadn’t lived life enough yet to sing it. So I sang it a lot in concerts, and then I started to study the role with Ronnie – my teacher Dr Veronica Dunne.”

In 2025 O’Sullivan sang Carmen for English National Opera, in a revival of Calixto Bieito’s 1999 production (which the now defunct Opera Ireland also presented at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 2002).

ENO presents opera in English. Has it been difficult to wipe the English from her head?

“Honestly, having it in my head has been very helpful. Because everything is so fresh in my head in my native language, it was very, very easy to slip into the French.

“I mean, it was much harder to learn the English, because I had already done La Tragédie de Carmen, the shortened version of Carmen [by Peter Brook] in Buxton. So my first learning of the role was in French. Going into the English was quite tough.

“In a way, I treated it like a different piece altogether. Even though it was the Calixto Bieito production, such an iconic production, I did have the French in my mind, although La Tragédie de Carmen doesn’t have any of the ensembles, just all the numbers for Carmen.”

What comes first when she starts to work on a new role?

“I’d love to say text, because that’s what everyone says: start with the text, then go to the music. But if it’s a new role for me I will straight away listen to it.

“It’s the most exciting thing hearing what it’s like, what it’s going to sound like in the voice, if it’s going to suit me, if it’s not. How high it goes, how low it goes.

[ Niamh O’Sullivan: ‘I am obsessed with singing. I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else’Opens in new window ]

“I’ll always try to find a good version on YouTube or on Spotify or wherever and have a listen right through with the score. When I accept, then I’ll start looking at the libretto separately, then go back to the music, once I kind of know what I want as an arc for that character.

“When I have it pretty well learned I’ll bring it to a coach, and then they will correct rhythms or language or give me some other interpretations or suggest different colours.”

A lot of singers lean more heavily on their coaches.

“I’m a very quick learner. Sometimes that’s not great, because I can get lazy and learn things too quickly. But I tend to do most of the work myself. If I feel a little bit insecure about a role I’ll bring a section of it to my current teacher, and I’ll go to a coach if it’s brand new and I need someone else to hear it on the piano.

“I find I’m kind of the best judge as well. I think we’re the best judge of ourselves as singers. And I don’t let myself get away with anything. So the bulk of the work is usually done in my apartment, just me and the piano.”

I offer O’Sullivan a time-machine trip to meet Carmen – not the Carmen of Prosper Mérimée’s original novella but that of Bizet and his librettists.

“I would commend her for being so brave and would ask her how she got to the place of being so independent, so focused on living and loving on her own terms. It’s really inspiring to work through this role of someone who is so independent and so secure.

“I’d ask if she could tell me a little bit more about that, about how I could take a leaf out of her book in those terms. And I guess I’d ask her if she was ever truly in love, if it has always just been lust and passion or if she ever actually did have someone in her life who she really did want to belong to.

“I can’t imagine her in a relationship. I can’t imagine her settling down with someone.”

That’s a real fascination for O’Sullivan, “because there was such a long part of my life where I also thought that about myself in that way. I thought, ‘Oh, I can never be in a relationship, because I just am too obsessed with this life I’m living.’

“Not to be vain, but I’m so obsessed with singing that I couldn’t imagine anyone who’d be able to understand that. I thought maybe this would be a life on my own and I would be okay with that. But now that I have a partner I’ve realised I couldn’t do that.”

Irish National Opera’s production of Carmen is at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, in Dublin, on Monday, November 2nd, Wednesday, November 4th, Friday, November 6th, and Saturday, November 7th