Carmen - OperaUpClose

[igenlode]

Went to see revisionist OperaUpClose "Carmen" again -- it still irritates me :-(

My companion's response -- "But this is the first time I've seen a production that gives Carmen a reason to leave him; otherwise she comes across as heartless" -- just validates my point: Carmen *is* heartless. The whole point of the plot is that she is a free spirit, she does what she likes. Bashing José (via some major changes in the lyrics) to make Carmen into a battered girlfriend who gets slapped around on a regular basis runs clean counter to the music, to the author's intent, and to the characters' integrity. And as a result it comes across as pushing a political point at the expense of the opera.

Frankly, if you wanted to push the domestic violence agenda it would make a lot more sense to depict José as the victim of 'battered wife syndrome': he gets exploited, undergoes long-term belittling and abuse and finally snaps. And having Carmen sobbing on the floor with blood running from her mouth while José delivers his yearning, gentle love aria to her in the tavern is just... perverse. It's not in the music, and it's not in the original lyrics, and rewriting the plot to that degree isn't opera 'up close' for a reduced cast -- it's agitprop.

Rewriting "Traviata" to cast Germont as a 1920s politician trying to protect his image (rather than a stiff-backed and unimaginative father) is fine by me, because it doesn't alter the basic story of the opera: that Violetta sacrifices her happiness and implicitly her life in the name of surface respectability. But turning "Carmen" into the story of a battered woman who keeps crawling back to her abuser when he promises to change -- and explaining this with the statement that This is not a love story... or a doomed romance or a violently passionate relationship -- is basically saying that the feminism of the original plot is not acceptable to today's feminists.

Of course it's not a love story. It's the story of a woman who has lovers when and while it suits her and not while it suits them. José's only attraction is the initial challenge he poses -- he really isn't her type and never was.

Comments

[pedanther]

...yeah. Everything you said.

[igenlode]

Except that otherwise it's a really good production: the usual ingenious devices to reduce the cast requirements, including the idea that in the nameless South American state in which the adaptation is set, the soldiers are moonlighting as smugglers with Zuniga's tacit knowledge -- after all the two sets of singers never appear on stage at the same time, so why not double up the roles and halve the requirement? ;-)

The usual really good acting ('close up'!) and talented young principals -- I saw both casts, and both are excellent -- and the usual fascinating reorchestration of a complete score for a handful of instruments (in this case, flute, cello, violin and piano, which is one more instrument than usual...)

And than you've got this massive off-kilter rewrite running through the whole thing from the tavern scene onwards, and it doesn't make sense: Carmen pays her debts, but she doesn't pay them to the extent of letting her corporal beat her up. She isn't a needy, dependent woman with nowhere else to go -- she doesn't need to give him the time of day ever again after he hits her during their first night out. She isn't as attracted to him as all that! And given that the actress portrays her at all other times with such strong body language, having her cringing before José looks really weird...

[pedanther]

That sounds so much more annoying than if it had just been a bad production.

[igenlode]

The good thing is that I feel a Micaela-fic coming on :-)

(I had a look, and the category does actually exist on fanfiction.net, albeit with only one story in it and that in Spanish... the exercise will at least be an interesting one to see how many people check to see why I write personally and how many check to see what gets written under the "Phantom" category!)