Carmen wants to have her cake and eat it too: she finds Don Jose cute, and he is hopelessly in love with her. So she demands that he abandons his career as a soldier to follow her gypsy ways. Of course, when she tires of him, he cannot devote his energy to, say, cleaning the rifle real neat or ironing the uniform he gave up. He has no better activities than to stalk her. Drama, again, which ends up with Don Jose knifing her and then singing an aria, “Si je l’avais fait.” (French for ).

Hadar Halévy as Carmen, picture Terrence McCarthy/SFOpera who also took, below the jump, the picture of Karita Mattila and Misha Didyk

If I did it