Interesting article from Judith Mackrell in The Guardian (Found via the FT site) on how differently Carmen has been portaryed.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Before she became one of the great erotic heroines of stage and fiction, the real-life Carmen was apparently remembered as a women of unusually radical politics. According to local Spanish history, Carmen Amaya was notorious less for being a Gypsy femme fatale than a lippy defender of underpaid workers and women's rights. Yet once the novelist Prosper Merimee had written her into the French literary canon (1845), and Bizet had giftwrapped her for opera (1875) she became an international icon for sultry and uninhibited sex.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=020330000426&query=ballet" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>