My floormate and I hop onto the city bus, taking our first steps into a world of big-city culture. She is from a small town in Montana and I come from what I call an oversized small town of Bakersfield, California, better known as the home of country singer Buck Owens.

We know nothing about opera.

And yet, in viewing Georges Bizet’s classic opera Carmen, we both find ourselves drawn into this new world that seems so far from home, academia or even the bustling city outside.

For the uninitiated, Carmen is the story of a gypsy who works in a tobacco factory. One of the officers, Don Jose (on duty in Seville where the story begins) falls in love with her and abandons his position to be with her. Eventually, Carmen falls in love with the bullfighter Escamillo. She denies her love for Don Jose because she wants to remain free in love. Out of jealousy, he stabs her.

What instantly drew me in were the voices—they were phenomenal. Live opera is not something that can be mass-produced. It’s one thing to be amazed at those high notes when hearing clips of opera in the movies or even on CD. It’s another thing entirely to be present, hear the voices and understand the emotion and context behind those high notes.

The Theatre de la Jeune Lune helps to foster a connection between the audience and the characters, featuring stadium-style seats on three sides of the stage. There isn’t a bad seat in the house since you don’t have to worry about looking over someone’s head or ending up in the nosebleed section.

The set resembles an arena more than a formal stage, which is appropriate. It becomes the center, not of the political war, but of the emotional struggle. Carmen warns the men early on, “If I love you, you better watch out!”

The color red visually weaves together the emotions that thrill and torment the characters. It becomes shorthand as it is used lavishly, though thoughtfully, for showing how interconnected are love, seduction, passion and jealousy.

The play begins in neutrality, with children in white, officers in earthy colors standing nearby smoking cigarettes and women from the tobacco factory dressed in shabby, white peasant costumes.

The first spot of red appears in the rose that Carmen throws at Don Jose, who soon becomes infatuated with her. More than a clichéd symbol of romantic affection, the rose is thrown almost like a missile and makes several appearances. Moments later, the red appears as blood on the face of a woman who works with Carmen in the tobacco factory. The two began fighting and, in anger, Carmen stabs her with a knife.

The motif continues throughout, in the lighting and costumes when Carmen and the other girls enter the whorehouse, where the near love scene with Don Jose later takes place. Most prominently at the end, Carmen appears dressed up in a red floor-length gown––which becomes the dress that she dies in.

As the opera is named after her, Carmen dominates the cast, and every theme and idea is embodied in her character. When she appears, her voice stands out above all others in the song “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.” As she struts slowly across the stage with a nonchalant expression, she embodies this song often used in pop culture to show that a woman is trying to tempt a man (Marian uses it in The Music Man to seduce the anvil salesman).

She reminded me of a predecessor of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, who seduces the naïve Benjamin. Don Jose, too, is naïve in love: When the two are on a table locked in embrace he gets nervous and cries out that the bugle has sounded and the retreat has begun.

Sexual innuendo forms a major part of the play. Half the entertainment is Carmen demonstrating how she has control over so many men. In her first scene, she walks around eating an orange—simply, yet sensuously. Doing this, she walks up to the officers, each a would-be lover, gives them a once-over and then shakes her head. She only deems a few worthy of her love. There are a few scenes in which she and Don Jose are somehow tied together. When she is arrested for stabbing the woman in the tobacco factory, he ties her up. Yet it becomes obvious that she has his heart on a string.

In a way, this play offered an escape from the everyday, elevating my mundane feelings and making me feel like a cultured citizen. Maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but for a moment in time, it’s fun seeing the melodrama of life heightened to a new level of entertainment. And now my floormate and I can go on back home and tell our folks we got some saw ourselves some big-city entertainment.