"L'amour est un oiseau rebel" ("Love is a rebellious bird" in english) is a famous piece from the opera "Carmen" composed by Georges Bizet based on an 1845 novel. Full of drama and passion and a great love story, "Carmen" is one of the greatest operas of all times, taking place at Sevilla. The music is astonishing, almost throughout the opera, with songs that most of us have heard and which have become legends in the classical music repertory. The main character, a cold-hearted, provocative and impulsive gypsy named Carmen, is unscrupulous in matters of the law and of the heart. "L'amour est un oiseau rebel" is the first piece of the opera.
The opera opens as some young men surround Carmen and her fellow cigarette-factory workers and start to flirt – but Carmen explains, with this unforgettable music, that ‘Love is a rebellious bird that none can tame’ and that her heart can not be tied down. At the end, her unprincipled personality will become the reason for her murder by her jealous ex lover Corporal Don José, whom Carmen initially seduces in order to escape an arrest but then turns her attention to another man, the bullfighter Escamillo. "Carmen" is an inventive and colourful opera and probably the most realistic of its kind.