Carmen, Agusan del Norte
Carmen was created into a municipality in 1949, when the "barrio"s of Carmen, Tagcatong, Cahayagan and San Agustin were separated from the municipality of Nasipit and constituted into the newly created town, by virtue of "Republic Act No. 380" which was approved on June 15, 1949. This law was sponsored by Congressman Marcos M. Calo. The town came into being on July 1, 1949.
Carmen
Meilhac and Halévy were a long-standing duo with an established division of labour: Meilhac, who was completely unmusical, wrote the dialogue and Halévy the verses. There is no clear indication of when work began on "Carmen". Bizet and the two librettists were all in Paris during 1873 and easily able to meet; thus there is little written record or correspondence relating to the beginning of the collaboration. The libretto was prepared in accordance with the conventions of "opéra comique", with dialogue separating musical numbers. It deviates from Mérimée's novella in a number of significant respects. In the original, events are spread over a much longer period of time, and much of the main story is narrated by José from his prison cell, as he awaits execution for Carmen's murder. Micaëla does not feature in Mérimée's version, and the Escamillo character is peripheral—a picador named Lucas who is only briefly Carmen's grand passion. Carmen has a husband called Garcia, whom José kills during a quarrel. In the novella, Carmen and José are presented much less sympathetically than they are in the opera; Bizet's biographer Mina Curtiss comments that Mérimée's Carmen, on stage, would have seemed "an unmitigated and unconvincing monster, had her character not been simplified and deepened".