(upbeat music) - Lyrical Opera Theater enriches Utah communities by providing innovative, professional family operas and concert entertainment that ensure arts and education performance excellence.

And here to tell us about the upcoming performance of "Carmen" is Executive Director Lynnette Owens.

Hi, Lynnette.

- Hi, Mary.

Thanks for having me.

- So, this is an iconic one.

Talk about why it still resonates with audiences.

- It has themes that are still pertinent to life today.

For example, the theme of love.

The famous Habanera talks about "love is like a rebellious bird that you can't capture."

When you try to evade love, it captures you.

When you wait around, it evades you.

So it has love, it has jealousy.

We have Don José, who gets very jealous of Carmen, who is very free spirited.

And it talks about freedom, the freedom to do what you like, to be where you want to be, to love who you want to love.

- And see, that all resonates forever.

- Forever.

- And Carmen's that strong, independent woman.

- She's independent.

She's very intelligent.

In fact, the Romani culture, they go from place to place and they sort of absorb the language and absorb the other cultures and they become very familiar with people.

And Carmen becomes an expert manipulator.

- There you go, yeah, in addition to being very fiercely independent- - Very fiercely independent.

- And the music, the music is so beautiful.

Everyone knows this music.

- Everyone knows it because Bizet was brilliant in that, although he's French and it's a French opera, he took on the Spanish, he explored Spanish music, and wrote the famous Habanera, which is a Spanish-oriented song.

The Seguidilla, also Spanish.

He wrote the Toreador aria.

And those are all very, very famous arias that everybody knows the music.

- Yeah, well, thank you for being on.

- Thank you.

- And good luck with it all.

- Thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming production of "Carmen" from Lyrical Opera Theater, it's September 7, 11, 13, and 15 at Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center.

You can go to lyricaloperatheater.com, lyricaloperatheater.com.

I'm Mary Dickson.

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