1/"ABC of opera" and this time it's the C, CARMEN. Whence that position? Bc the story of Don Jose's downfall - and that's the main plot - is not in itself edifying or even particularly moving. Maybe it's the mechanics of it. Once when I expressed a (momentarily) anti-CARMEN view
https://twitter.com/MetOpera/status/1335004726434410496
2/ on Opera-L someone said huh, well, maybe you just don't like sexually addictive ppl. And I thought well I like Salome and Elina Makropulos - and that's just within opera. But yes, Carmen is the OG of the genre. This excellent production by Sir Richard Eyre preserves
3/ her sexiness w/o ever resorting to kitschy stereotypes like the hands-on-hips bs. Since Rise Stevens in the '50s, no one singer has owned Carmen, but Elina Garanca could if anyone can. Alagna has French style and pathos. Speaking of stereotypes and kitsch,
4/ maybe this opera's indestructible popularity has to do with the Toreador Song? I mean, think of all the adaptations and ad-jingles you know to the tune of "Toreador en garde...." Be honest now. But the Toreador song is not *just* a kitschy set piece. Pumping his fame
5/ before an audience largely of soldiers, El Escamillo tells them: "Soldiers and matadors understand one another. We have combat as our pleasure." Death is part of life and that's a very Spanish insight. 19thc French Espagnerie treated the Pyrenees like a shower-curtain and
6/ and tantalized audiences with what might be behind it (no, not Joe Biden). Like "the land of the last dodo" - "It CAN happen here!" A kind of intra-European orientalism. Me, I'd usually rather see Bizet's other, literally orientalist opera, THE PEARL FISHERS. But I get the
7/ "peephole through the Pyrenees" impulse. They're crazy on the south side of it (think Klingsor!), and sometimes we want to be crazy too. I spent my post-freshman summer in Spain, when there were other options. (Salamanca, mainly, but toured all over, including
8/ Carmen's (and Figaro's and Rosina's) Seville. It was crazy. Ok, so, start the crazy!
9/ Some ask why there are so dang many soldiers on guard duty in CARMEN, and relatedly, why there’s business for smugglers when they don’t seem to be in the Pyrenees, within reach of France or Andorra, but rather near Seville, perhaps in the Sierra Morena, the brown hills that
10/ that tell the southbound traveler he’s entering Andalucía, just before the orange groves start to appear. I think the answer is, the story takes place during the First Carlist War, garrisons marked off territory, and internal tariffs fueled a smuggling trade.
11/ I once saw at NYCO a production updated to the Spanish Civil War. The Gypsies were running merch to the republicans; Micaëla and Escamillo were Nationalists of utmost respectability. It totally worked.
12/ And in case it seems I’ve slighted the 2ndary heroine, Micaëla, the good girl - another “prospective daughter” thing. Our hypothetical adoptee from China wd have been Liù, but a 2nd daughter on our own wd have been Teresa Micaëla Wagner.
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