ACT I. On a hot summer’s day in Seville, Corporal Moralès and the soldiers while away the time watching the passers-by, among whom is Micaëla, a peasant girl from Navarra. She asks Moralès if he knows Don José, and is told that he is a corporal in another platoon that is shortly expected to relieve the present guard. Avoiding their invitation to step inside the guardroom, Micaëla runs off. A trumpet call heralds the approach not only of the relief guard but also of a gang of young boys in the street imitating their drill. As the guards are changed, Moralès tells Don José that a girl is looking for him. Zuniga, the lieutenant in command of the new guard, questions him about the tobacco factory – a stranger in Seville, Zuniga senses the dangerous atmosphere of the locale.

The factory bell rings and the men of Seville gather round the female workers as they return after their lunch break. The gypsy Carmen is awaited with anticipation. When the men gather round her, she tells them love obeys no known laws (Habañera: “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”). Only one man pays no attention to her – Don José. Carmen, eyeing him closely, approaches him slowly and deliberately, and then throws a flower at him. She runs away and, as the women go back into the factory, the crowd disperses, while Don José reluctantly admits to himself that Carmen has had an effect on him – the effect of a witch.

Micaëla returns, bringing news of Don José’s mother back home in the country. She has sent Micaëla, who lives with her, to give him a letter (“Parle-moi de ma mère”). Micaëla tells him that his mother misses him deeply and forgives him for everything, waiting for his return.  As Don José wistfully recalls his mother and his village, he feels strength and courage and senses that his mother is protecting him from afar – protecting him from the danger of falling into the clutches of the demonic gypsy woman he just encountered. When he starts to read her letter, Micaëla leaves, feeling embarrassed to stay since the letter suggests that he marry her. At the moment that he decides to obey, a fight is heard from within the factory.  The women working there stream out with sharply conflicting accounts of what has occurred, but it is certain that Carmen and one of her fellow workers quarrelled and that the other girl was wounded. Carmen, led out by Don José, refuses to answer any of Zuniga’s questions. Don José is ordered to tie her up and take her to prison. When the others have gone and Don José has tied her hands, she talks to him suggesting that he loves her.  He tells her that he forbids her to speak to him – so she begins to sing about her life of charms and dancing in her friend Lillas Pastia’s tavern outside the walls of Seville, intimating and in due course openly saying how she and a certain corporal who she knows loves her could be so happy together there. (Séguedille: “Près des remparts de Séville”). Don José tries to resist her – but he is mesmerized and gives way to his feelings that he has been trying to suppress.  Confessing he loves her and passionately asking her to love him, he agrees to let her escape.  He unties the rope and, as they leave for prison, Carmen slips away.  Don José is arrested.

ACT II. Carmen and her friends Frasquita and Mercédès entertain Zuniga and other officers in Lilas Pastia’s tavern, a month later (“Les tringles des sistres tintaient”). Zuniga tells Carmen that Don José has been released from prison this very day. A torchlight procession in honour of the bullfighter Escamillo is heard, and the officers invite him in. He describes the excitements of his profession, in particular the amorous rewards that follow a successful bullfight (Toreador’s Song: “Votre toast”). Escamillo then propositions Carmen, but although she is aroused by Escamillo she replies that she is engaged for the moment. He says he will wait. Carmen refuses to leave with Zuniga, who threatens to return later. When the company has departed, the smugglers Dancaïre and Remendado enter. They have business in hand for which their regular female accomplices are essential (“Nous avons en tête une affaire”). Frasquita and Mercédès are game, but Carmen refuses to leave Seville: she is in love. Her friends are incredulous. Don José’s song is heard in the distance. (“Dragon d’Alcala”). The smugglers leave. Carmen tells Don José that she has been dancing for his officers. When he reacts jealously, she agrees to entertain him alone (“Je vais danser en votre honneur”). Accompanying herself on the castanets, she dances and sings seductively for him.  Bugles are heard in the distance, sounding the retreat. Don José says that he must return to barracks. Stupefied, Carmen mocks him and tells him to leave, but he insists she listens to him tell her how much he loves her.  He takes out from inside his tunic the flower she had thrown to him and tells her how its faded scent sustained his love during the long weeks in prison (Flower Song: “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée”). But she replies that he doesn’t love her; if he did he would desert the army and join her in a life of freedom in the mountains. When, torn with doubts, he finally refuses, she dismisses him contemptuously. As he leaves, Zuniga bursts in, hoping that Carmen will accept his amorous desires. In a jealous rage Don José attacks him. The smugglers return, separate them, and put Zuniga under temporary constraint (“Bel officier”). Don José realises that he now has no choice but to desert the army and join the smugglers.

ACT III. In their camp deep inside the mountains, the smugglers’ gang enters with contraband and pauses for a brief rest while Dancaïre and Remendado go on a reconnaissance mission. Carmen and Don José quarrel, and he gazes regretfully down to the valley where his mother is living. Carmen advises him to leave and join her. Carmen and her friends Frasquita and Mercédès turn cards to tell their fortunes: Frasquita and Mercédès foresee rich and gallant lovers, but Carmen’s cards spell death, for her and for Don José. She accepts the prophecy as Fate (Card Song: “En vain pour éviter les réponses amères”). Remendado and Dancaïre return announcing that customs officers are guarding the pass: Carmen, Frasquita, and Mercédès know how to deal with them (“Quant au douanier”). All depart. Micaëla appears, led by a mountaineer, as she has come to search for Don José. She says that she fears nothing so much as meeting the woman who has turned the man she once loved into a criminal (“Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante”). But she hurries away in fear when a shot rings out. It is Don José firing at an intruder, who turns out to be Escamillo.  When the toreador says to him he is hoping to see a gypsy girl he is madly in love and refers to a soldier who deserted the army for her, Don José reveals his identity to him and they fight. Carmen and the smugglers return and separate them. Escamillo invites everyone, especially Carmen, to be his guests at the next bullfight in Seville. Don José is furious and desperate. Micaëla is discovered, and she begs Don José to leave with her to see his mother but he angrily refuses (“Dût-il m’en couter la vie”). Micaëla then reveals the reason that she has come – his mother is dying and wants to see her son one last time so that she can forgive him. Don José leaves with her, threatening Carmen that they will meet again. As Don José and Micaëla leave, Escamillo is heard singing in the distance.

ACT IV. In the heat of the Spanish sun in Seville, festivities are taking place in advance of Escamillo’s bullfight. Among the excited crowd cheering are Frasquita and Mercédès. Carmen enters on Escamillo’s arm (“Si tu m’aimes”). Frasquita and Mercédès warn Carmen that Don José has been seen in the crowd. She says that she is not afraid. Everyone except Carmen leaves to take their places in the bullring. Carmen stays behind to confront Don José, who appears. He implores her to forget the past and start a new life with him. She tells him calmly but firmly that everything between them is over. She will never give in: she was born free and free she will die. While the crowd is heard cheering Escamillo, Don José becomes increasingly desperate and threatens Carmen, barring her way when she tries to leave and join everyone in the bullring. After she defiantly tells him, in response to his question to her, that she loves Escamillo, Don José turns violent, provoking Carmen to take from her finger the ring that he once gave her and contemptuously throw it at his feet. While the crowd in the bullring acclaim Escamillo’s success in his bullfight, Don José frenziedly stabs Carmen, and as the crowd, the police and Escamillo come out and are horrified to see Carmen lying dead on the ground, Don José tells the police that they can arrest him as he has killed the woman he loved.