Quaint, is the best way to describe this. it's not the opera, of course, but its source. Like many opera plots it has many arbitrary moments and larger-than-life characters (or frankly, unlikely events and improbable characters ). "Carmen" also reads much of the time like a discourse on Spanish dialects and folklore, some of which, as a Spanish speaker, i found of doubtful accuracy. Carmen herself is a wicked manipulative woman with little to redeem her, her lover is led by the nose to his ruin. "Les Ames" is the story of Don Juan, but not the famous one, his namesake, equally violent and self-indulgent, a serial killer of victims of all ages and both sexes. Finally, he starts to have premonitions of his likely afterlife which brings on a conversion to an ascetic life as a monk. As so often, the devil has the best tunes, so in both stories the wicked bits are more fun than the moralising. ( )