Mérimée, a major source of inspiration for opera An unlikely encounter

There are two reasons why an author as restrained as Mérimée, whose theater was never staged and whose relationship to emotions was paradoxical, had such an impact on nineteenth-century opera: his personal exploration of genres (historical novel, theater, novella), which resonates with the evolution of opera; and the strong emotional charge of his work, even if hidden underneath irony. Transposable in his fictional works, their structure, and his writing, it is indeed an art of excess that lyric theater recognized in him.