"One of the most popular operas of all time." It's a very common comment of Carmen, you'll find it on most sites advertising a performance, and they all cite all the adaptions and spoofs and advertisements using the music as evidence of the popularity of the opera. From Colorado to Sydney, from Kansas to Adelaide, the (mis)use of the music is touted as evidence of popularity of the opera.
Or as Anchorage Opera puts it, "If you’re new to opera, this one is for you! If you’re an opera-lover, you’ll be OBSESSED with Carmen!" Go to the Anchorage Opera site for pics of their glowing production and a sprightly synopsis of the plot.
(This is the first of our 2024 posts for meetings, and for a new interest, we'll link you every week to one or more opera companies from round the world.)
So how does Carmen come out tops in the opera pops commentaries? The composer's prominence? The characters? The story? The music?
The composer
He didn't seem likely to create the most popular opera of all time. Georges Bizet produced only two well-known operas, neither very well received in his time. And they are so different! At 25, he created the much criticised, fake-mythical and improbably plotted Les Pêcheurs de Perles, known now mainly (and maybe unfairly) for what's probably most famous duet of tenor and baritone, the Pearl Fishers' Duet. Carmen, his triumph, brilliantly and scandalously realistic, came 12 years later. In that time, his goals and styles changed dramatically, to realism, far from the frivolous style he had come to despise. As Carmen was completed, he wrote to a friend that he had “absolute certainty of having found my path”.
But Carmen's performance was delayed for fear of hostile response to such stark realism. The first performance was booed and months later, whilst the management was giving away tickets for this apparently failed opera, he died.
The story
Carmen was a novella by Prosper Mérimée, whose story has some, but not all, of the ingredients, the characters, even the words, of the opera. And Mérimée was inspired in turn by Pushkin’s The Gypsies (1824) which apparently inspired at least 18 operas!
It's a tight, fastpaced story with fascinating characters, first of course Carmen herself. The notes for Colorado Opera's production quote Harvard professor Daniel Albright, “Carmen seems to be—more or less—singing to herself, for her own self-delight…If we are shocked, at the end, to learn that she is mortal, it is because she seems to possess being more fully than anyone or anything else.”
And the theme of freedom is throughout the opera, from her entrance to her death. But with it is the theme of doom, her fatalism, and her destruction. Recent productions have challenged the stereotype character - read about Barrie Kosky's approach here. But the story remains a confrontation of two incompatible (if stereotyped) characters, Carmen and Don José, both doomed from the start. She is throughout free, he from the beginning to be utterly altered and then destroyed. Stuart Maunder puts it well:
And we see Carmen totally from Don Jose’s perspective, so in a strange way we are all turned into Carmen’s lovers. It is his disintegration that forms the core of the opera. José, in contrast to Carmen, undergoes a complete, doomed metamorphosis. He changes from a naive country boy, to a besotted lover, and finally into a homicidal demon who, driven mad by unrequited love, murders the object of his fierce love.
Full synopsis and history here.
The music
“Tchaikovsky, whose own music shows traces of Bizet’s influence, predicted that it would be the world’s most famous opera. He was not far wrong. The tunes are familiar to people who have never set foot inside an opera house and who do not even know the composer’s name….” (BBC Music Magazine). Brahms agreed with Tchaikovsky, Wagner declared, ‘At last. Someone with new ideas’.
What new ideas?
I think Carmen stands the test of time because it prefigures the musical theatre of the 20th century, paving the way for shows such as West Side Story and Sweeney Todd. Indeed, Stephen Sondheim, who had a large hand in both these works and is not a fan of opera, makes an exception with "Carmen id my idea of an ideal opera…I like that twilight zone between what we call musicals and what we call opera…The great thing about Carmen is the sense of song form, allied to the feeling of an endlessly flowing song texture, even though it’s full of numbers. How could Bizet master the form that way and also give you 13 of the best songs you ever heard in your life?’ (Stephen Sondheim, 1987, p.490.)
And here's a taste of what's required of the singers.
Several people commented that in our production Domingo was a bit old for the role of Jose back in 1984 - but was he anyway the voice for it? And his acting?
So here's a tenor tasting: versions of the wonderful Flower Song Jose sings to Carmen on return from prison. Your vote?
1967 Jon Vickers at the Met Carmen was Grace Bumbry
1987 José Carreras at the Met Agnes Baltsa was Carmen
2006 Jonas Kaufmann at ROH (this is from the full opera you can watch on YouTube - see links at the end of this week's blog post. Anna Caterina Antonacci was Carmen.)
2017 Roberto Alagna at the Met with Elīna Garanča as Carmen (and Teddy Tahu Rhodes was her toreador!)
Our production
We're watching the 1984 French-Italian film directed by Francesco Rosi. Julia Migenes Johnson stars in the title role.
Plácido Domingo is Don José.
"A crisp, hot Carmen", wrote the Washington Post critic, "a breathtakingly beautiful hybrid of opera and cinema, a marriage of sight and sound that brings the composer's star-crossed lovers to life as stagecraft has never done. It takes us into the mountains of Spain where the bandits dwell, and into the ring with the matador Escamillo. Here is the arena of love and death where the bloodstained sands mark the slaying of the temptress and the bull.
An inspired Francesco Rosi directs with reverence.. . The cinematography by Pasqualino de Santis is passionate. You can feel the heat of the air and the bodies, even the lust between Carmen and the men who wait to watch her in the taverna at work...
Tenor Placido Domingo... plays the obsessed soldier Don Jose, who deserts his family and career to follow something wild and free. Domingo bases his characterization on Prosper Merimee's violent novella rather than on the toned-down libretto written after Bizet's death. He portrays Don Jose rather like Robert Mitchum might have."
And for viewing on YouTube?
This link takes you to Part 1.
Don Jose is sung by a very young Jonas Kaufmann, and Carmen by Anna Caterina Antonacci.
Or alternatively, the Opera Australia Carmen on the Harbour is still available on ABC iView. Click this link. Filmed in 2013, the production starred Rinat Shaham as Carmen, Dmytro Popov as Don José, , Andrew Jones as the bullfighter Escamillo, and Nicole Car as Micaëla.
Lyn, 14/2/24