Throughout history, gypsy culture has developed a mysticism about it that many artists have reflected on, both in a musical sense and through other creative expressions. George Bizet, a famous French composer of the Romantic era, skillfully presents the tragic story of Carmen, based on the famous novella by Prosper Mérimée, using unique and captivating expressions in his music to explore the kingdom of the gypsies. In the opera, Carmen, the heroine, is a young gypsy from Seville, Spain, who has a wild and inconsistent love life and becomes involved with a soldier named Don José. Don José, fascinated by Carmen's seductive skill, soon becomes dependent on Carmen's love for him, and when she moves on, this drives him to a passionate rage, which ultimately leads to murder. In this particular aria, “En vain pour éviter,” Carmen discovers that both her fate and that of Don José are marked by death, and as she tries to avoid it, she realizes that it is inevitable. George Bizet imitates Carmen's attempt to escape fate through the use of secondary chords, relative keys and extensions of the dominant function, so as to avoid the tonic, which represents her death. Furthermore, Bizet manages to create a sense of ambiguity in Carmen's vision of her destiny through unusual progressions and sequence breaks. (Encyclopedia Britannica)The secondary chords have a very specific function in this piece. Starting in measure 38, there is an F pedal in the bass line, as well as the use of a fully diminished vii43/iv chord that shifts to an iv64 chord in measure 40 as Carmen sings, “In vain, to avoid Harsh comments, mixed in vain, this solves nothing." The use of the secondary chord in this particular setting plays into the lyrics that speak of C... in the center of the card... ions in relative keys, as well as anomalous sequences and progressions add mysticism and ambiguity. of the fate of Carmen and the gypsy world. Word painting is strongly incorporated and intentional throughout the aria. The character of Bizet's Carmen is strong and free, as demonstrated by the fact that she fights against the tonic until the end, extending the dominant section for as long as possible before finally surrendering to her fate. The intentional correlation between the lyrical and musical structure of this song and the gypsy sound distinguishes this aria from many others and makes it interesting to analyze and listen to. Works Cited "Georges Bizet". Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online academic edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 17 December. 2013. .