MEMORIES OF CARMENCITA
Prompted by Bizet's Carmen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, April 16, 2000, production of the Folkoperan of Stockholm, Sweden.
This afternoon's performance of Carmen by the Folkoperan was about as far as one could get from the traditional Metropolitan Opera production, or even the Met's radical Zeffirelli production. Yet, sitting in BAM's Harvey Lichtenstein Theatre, I was awash in nostalgia as I recalled seeing my first opera. If I took a nap on that long-ago afternoon, I was told that as a special treat I would be able to attend the Metropolitan Opera in the evening. I cannot recall the exact date, but I saw an opera for the first time in my nine years, and it was Carmen, and it starred a great new diva, Risë Stevens. "Wow" then, for Stevens and her lush voice. And "wow" this afternoon, but for entirely different reasons. Even with several Carmens sashaying around in my memory in between these two performances, times have changed in portraying the character of Carmen.
Risë Stevens' portrayal of Carmen of the 1940s floored me. For a full week after I attended that memorable Met evening, using one of Uncle Harry's gold foil cigar bands I practiced throwing the foil ring across the room and snarling "Tiens!," à la Stevens, with one arm akimbo while I attempted to wiggle my putative hips. A very tricky maneuver and one that inspired great respect for Gypsy ladies who worked in cigarette factories. The nine-year-old that I was could not replicate the Stevens decolletage in her off-the-shoulder bodice, or her hoop earrings, or her very red lipsticked mouth. But I had that minor earthquake of recognition that even a nine-year-old confronts in herself when an experience as bold, exciting, and unforgettable as Carmen has entered her life. I wasn't in the Bronx anymore.
Fifty years later, Denyce Graves’ Carmen of the 1990s continues in the Stevens tradition of earthy, passionate, and frankly sexy Carmens. Graves brings a powerful, supple and beautifully dark voice to her portrayal. While likened to Stevens in characterization, Graves’ Carmen goes far beyond Stevens' 1940s interpretation as mores have loosened in stage performance, reflecting the times.
Graves’ Carmen is brazen and sexually open for all to see, and the flaunting displays of her body make Stevens's interpretation tame by comparison. Graves’ passionate portrayal reflects her own understanding of the ambivalence driving this Carmen to her destiny. Graves’ Carmen is supremely passionate and so right for the context -- else why would men have been driven to murder if not for having been set on fire by her. (Where this passion is so right for opera, look at what a half-century has yielded since Stevens' Carmen. We get Michael Jackson's crotch grabbing and MTV sex.)
In the Folkoperan company, the roles are rotated over the four performances: Carmen among three singers - two mezzos and one alto, two Don Josés, and two Escamillos. This is a laudable policy in which young singers are further seasoned in repertory and trained in an ensemble, experienced as they all are. The concept of the Folkoperan's Carmen follows no tradition that American operagoers are familiar with. The company promotes its productions as "unconventional". This Carmen goes so far beyond the bounds of convention that one is hard put to describe the opera and the character. This Carmen, my Swedish companion so aptly remarked, is self-destructive. This is a Carmen for the 2000s.
Watching the Folkoperan's Carmen draw the blade of her knife across both wrists and upper arms and then turn those arms outward for the audience to observe the blood trickle, how could one not help but think 'self-destructive'? But, why did she do it, and why did she then spend most of the remaining scenes with both of her arms wrapped in bandages to remind us of the act just witnessed? When this Carmen dances, her shoes are literally nailed to the stage and she sways only her torso to the Gypsy music. In milliseconds this Carmen rockets from to love to hate and back again. This Carmen proclaims her freedom and accepts her destiny. Seeing the stark and arid stage setting combined with the unyieldingly ugly picture of poverty, degradation, violence, brutal sex, drunkenness (and there are a lot of seriously inebriated Gypsy factory girls running the cigarette machinery), thievery, and greed - this is not a Carmen to take a nine year old to see. This Carmen is more Jean Genet than Georges Bizet.
Perhaps one needs to go back to the opening scene of this Carmen to establish just how untraditional it truly is -- no donkeys, no stage set, no supers, no identifiable Seville. As the curtain rises, on the bare stage are ten pairs of plain rubber boots neatly and evenly spaced from stage left to stage right. Ten Gypsy women enter stage left, slowly remove their flat shoes, put their feet into the boots, and then depart stage right -- presumably to enter the cigarette factory. As soon as these ragged, unkempt, tipsy, and toil-worn women have left the stage, the soldiers straggle in. They are weary, scruffy, with dirty faces in grimy uniforms, and much abused by their superiors. The soldiers spy the shoes and, in a single concerted motion, they fall upon the shoes and lift them to their noses to inhale the fragrance within. The soldiers writhe on the floor holding and stroking the shoes.
The soldiers not so surreptitiously rub parts of their bodies when the Gypsy girls appear later on their break. We observe the soldiers turn their backs to the audience and grasp and squeeze their own buttocks in erotic response to ogling the girls standing upstage. As the soldiers and girls turn to face down stage, the girls are thrown to the ground and the men pull aside their uniform jackets and begin to unzip their trousers. No mistaking the message here.
Later, when Escamillo enters, he is dressed in a black silk suit with pegged pants, no tie, dark glasses, gym bag in hand and a suit bag slung over his shoulder, looking very much the rock star en route to a gig. At Lillas Pastia's, with only café chairs for props, Escamillo drunkenly walks across a bridge of chairs placed by the adoring Gypsies and soldiers. He is their hero. Just a hometown boy who made good but hasn't forgotten the folks who still love him. Folkoperan's Sevillized Bruce Springsteen.
Freedom of interpretation surely has changed. And changed to the degree that the Folkoperan's Carmen sings her Habanera to Zuñiga while she is flat on her back, head toward the audience, arms outstretched on the floor, and legs parted with knees flexed as if inviting her next customer to take his turn on her body. Not that Carmencita necessarily engages in sex for money. No, she always sings of love. But Carmencita is in and out of love quickly. That element of Carmen's character has probably endured over the 125 years since the opera's premiere. The quirkiness of the production is unsettling in its bizarrerie -- with beetle-like black-clad mountaineers climbing up the rear wall of the stage as the band of smugglers reach the heights of their mountain hideout. The climbers hang on their wires throughout the entire scene, swaying across the wall with the changes in action and tempo.
Yet the production works only on its own terms, as anti-Carmen. No lush costumes. Carmen is the only female on stage with a remotely sexy body, and she is a bit better dressed than the other girls. The rest are lumpy, with stringy hair, scraggly dresses, dirty faces … a Gypsy proletariat. The only traditional costumes are at the end, just before the bullfight is about to start, when Escamillo and Carmen appear, he in his red and gold suit of lights, she in a bright red long-trained dress with miles of flounces tangling about her stiletto heels. José's habillement has declined drastically since his first meeting with Carmen. When he first appears, José is quite well turned out in a blue shearling car coat. The soldiers' uniforms are shabby and non-descript. They look like a band of guerilla schleppers, not an army. Even Lieutenant Zuñiga undergoes a fall in his estate, from the raunchy commanding officer in his long coat and leather-holstered pistol to dirty-shirted beggar bearing a limp bouquet for Carmen after whom he still lusts. As far as Zuñiga is concerned, Carmen is consistent -- she always says NO.
And then there is José. Left his Mom at home with some ill feelings there. Joined the army. Made corporal; was broken to private for bad conduct. Fell for the Gypsy wench Carmen. Is embarrassed by Micaela's attentions to him; she wants to play house with him, apparently. He's guilty about his sick Mom at home. He's got this rose Carmen gave him for which he helped her escape after she had an altercation with another factory worker. He's got to go home to Mom so she can forgive him before she dies. But he promises Carmen that he'll return. The part of Micaela is completely superfluous after her first entrance during which those devilish soldiers try to lift her dress to get a better look at the business end of this country lass. She contributes nothing to the plot but she gets to sing a pretty aria all alone on stage. I had rather hoped that the break with tradition might include scissoring Micaela out of the libretto but some icons are untouchable, alas.
The Folkoperan's characterization of José is as close to the traditional as any: he is still the innocent village lad fallen under the spell of the smoky Gypsy, Carmen. They have a passionate onstage embrace that is sexily real for opera. But, she is playing him along to get what she wants. Carmen says she loves José but her early warning aria about taking a chance on love with the likes of Carmen hasn't penetrated his dense village brain. Until he wimps out. He is concerned about his honor, which will be violated if he runs away with Carmen. Never mind that José is no longer the innocent he once was back home with Mom. Ta-ra-ta-ta. His unit's bugler is calling him. It's the army or Carmen. He goes to Mom but swears to Carmen that he'll be back. All around José swirls this cast of dysfunctional gypsy characters with Carmen at the eye of the storm.
The Folkoperan works in a new tradition -- using a chamber orchestra with a complement of about thirty excellent young musicians - even the conductor is rotated. Its productions are sized for a smaller, more intimate setting. This production is radically different in its conception, which taken on its own terms made some sense only as long as it is not compared to the traditional Carmen. Brahms claimed to have seen twenty-six performances of the opera in 1876. Given that the perennial bachelor Brahms appeared to have his sexual appetites satisfied exclusively with prostitutes, even back then Carmen had charms other than the music. Still, Bizet's Carmen music is always gorgeous.
Folkoperan's production was closer to an expressionist vision of life and hard times among a group of outcasts. I wish I could say that this Carmen was a compelling and striking characterization. She was not. This Carmen was not fiery. Life (and the men in it) keeps trying to beat her down. She fights back until she realizes the futility of doing so given what the cards have told her. In the old days the cards said: "le mort". For the Folkoperan's Carmen they say: "döden". Those of us who glory in the French libretto, as bad as it really is, have no anchor in Swedish. But, knowing well the story and the action is enough to go on even with the presence of supertitles. Unfortunately, supertitles force you to interrupt watching the action, and reading the translation momentarily suspends your attention to the music. This is far from ideal for even the devoted operagoer. For my Swedish companion, hearing the opera in her native language gave it a presence and immediacy that only enhanced her experience.
No longer nine, I still see that sexy Risë and hear that cajoling Habañera. Now I've got hips. And how.
Copyright©2000 Janet I. Wasserman
Prompted by Bizet's Carmen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, April 16, 2000, production of the Folkoperan of Stockholm, Sweden.
This afternoon's performance of Carmen by the Folkoperan was about as far as one could get from the traditional Metropolitan Opera production, or even the Met's radical Zeffirelli production. Yet, sitting in BAM's Harvey Lichtenstein Theatre, I was awash in nostalgia as I recalled seeing my first opera. If I took a nap on that long-ago afternoon, I was told that as a special treat I would be able to attend the Metropolitan Opera in the evening. I cannot recall the exact date, but I saw an opera for the first time in my nine years, and it was Carmen, and it starred a great new diva, Risë Stevens. "Wow" then, for Stevens and her lush voice. And "wow" this afternoon, but for entirely different reasons. Even with several Carmens sashaying around in my memory in between these two performances, times have changed in portraying the character of Carmen.
Risë Stevens' portrayal of Carmen of the 1940s floored me. For a full week after I attended that memorable Met evening, using one of Uncle Harry's gold foil cigar bands I practiced throwing the foil ring across the room and snarling "Tiens!," à la Stevens, with one arm akimbo while I attempted to wiggle my putative hips. A very tricky maneuver and one that inspired great respect for Gypsy ladies who worked in cigarette factories. The nine-year-old that I was could not replicate the Stevens decolletage in her off-the-shoulder bodice, or her hoop earrings, or her very red lipsticked mouth. But I had that minor earthquake of recognition that even a nine-year-old confronts in herself when an experience as bold, exciting, and unforgettable as Carmen has entered her life. I wasn't in the Bronx anymore.
Fifty years later, Denyce Graves’ Carmen of the 1990s continues in the Stevens tradition of earthy, passionate, and frankly sexy Carmens. Graves brings a powerful, supple and beautifully dark voice to her portrayal. While likened to Stevens in characterization, Graves’ Carmen goes far beyond Stevens' 1940s interpretation as mores have loosened in stage performance, reflecting the times.
Graves’ Carmen is brazen and sexually open for all to see, and the flaunting displays of her body make Stevens's interpretation tame by comparison. Graves’ passionate portrayal reflects her own understanding of the ambivalence driving this Carmen to her destiny. Graves’ Carmen is supremely passionate and so right for the context -- else why would men have been driven to murder if not for having been set on fire by her. (Where this passion is so right for opera, look at what a half-century has yielded since Stevens' Carmen. We get Michael Jackson's crotch grabbing and MTV sex.)
In the Folkoperan company, the roles are rotated over the four performances: Carmen among three singers - two mezzos and one alto, two Don Josés, and two Escamillos. This is a laudable policy in which young singers are further seasoned in repertory and trained in an ensemble, experienced as they all are. The concept of the Folkoperan's Carmen follows no tradition that American operagoers are familiar with. The company promotes its productions as "unconventional". This Carmen goes so far beyond the bounds of convention that one is hard put to describe the opera and the character. This Carmen, my Swedish companion so aptly remarked, is self-destructive. This is a Carmen for the 2000s.
Watching the Folkoperan's Carmen draw the blade of her knife across both wrists and upper arms and then turn those arms outward for the audience to observe the blood trickle, how could one not help but think 'self-destructive'? But, why did she do it, and why did she then spend most of the remaining scenes with both of her arms wrapped in bandages to remind us of the act just witnessed? When this Carmen dances, her shoes are literally nailed to the stage and she sways only her torso to the Gypsy music. In milliseconds this Carmen rockets from to love to hate and back again. This Carmen proclaims her freedom and accepts her destiny. Seeing the stark and arid stage setting combined with the unyieldingly ugly picture of poverty, degradation, violence, brutal sex, drunkenness (and there are a lot of seriously inebriated Gypsy factory girls running the cigarette machinery), thievery, and greed - this is not a Carmen to take a nine year old to see. This Carmen is more Jean Genet than Georges Bizet.
Perhaps one needs to go back to the opening scene of this Carmen to establish just how untraditional it truly is -- no donkeys, no stage set, no supers, no identifiable Seville. As the curtain rises, on the bare stage are ten pairs of plain rubber boots neatly and evenly spaced from stage left to stage right. Ten Gypsy women enter stage left, slowly remove their flat shoes, put their feet into the boots, and then depart stage right -- presumably to enter the cigarette factory. As soon as these ragged, unkempt, tipsy, and toil-worn women have left the stage, the soldiers straggle in. They are weary, scruffy, with dirty faces in grimy uniforms, and much abused by their superiors. The soldiers spy the shoes and, in a single concerted motion, they fall upon the shoes and lift them to their noses to inhale the fragrance within. The soldiers writhe on the floor holding and stroking the shoes.
The soldiers not so surreptitiously rub parts of their bodies when the Gypsy girls appear later on their break. We observe the soldiers turn their backs to the audience and grasp and squeeze their own buttocks in erotic response to ogling the girls standing upstage. As the soldiers and girls turn to face down stage, the girls are thrown to the ground and the men pull aside their uniform jackets and begin to unzip their trousers. No mistaking the message here.
Later, when Escamillo enters, he is dressed in a black silk suit with pegged pants, no tie, dark glasses, gym bag in hand and a suit bag slung over his shoulder, looking very much the rock star en route to a gig. At Lillas Pastia's, with only café chairs for props, Escamillo drunkenly walks across a bridge of chairs placed by the adoring Gypsies and soldiers. He is their hero. Just a hometown boy who made good but hasn't forgotten the folks who still love him. Folkoperan's Sevillized Bruce Springsteen.
Freedom of interpretation surely has changed. And changed to the degree that the Folkoperan's Carmen sings her Habanera to Zuñiga while she is flat on her back, head toward the audience, arms outstretched on the floor, and legs parted with knees flexed as if inviting her next customer to take his turn on her body. Not that Carmencita necessarily engages in sex for money. No, she always sings of love. But Carmencita is in and out of love quickly. That element of Carmen's character has probably endured over the 125 years since the opera's premiere. The quirkiness of the production is unsettling in its bizarrerie -- with beetle-like black-clad mountaineers climbing up the rear wall of the stage as the band of smugglers reach the heights of their mountain hideout. The climbers hang on their wires throughout the entire scene, swaying across the wall with the changes in action and tempo.
Yet the production works only on its own terms, as anti-Carmen. No lush costumes. Carmen is the only female on stage with a remotely sexy body, and she is a bit better dressed than the other girls. The rest are lumpy, with stringy hair, scraggly dresses, dirty faces … a Gypsy proletariat. The only traditional costumes are at the end, just before the bullfight is about to start, when Escamillo and Carmen appear, he in his red and gold suit of lights, she in a bright red long-trained dress with miles of flounces tangling about her stiletto heels. José's habillement has declined drastically since his first meeting with Carmen. When he first appears, José is quite well turned out in a blue shearling car coat. The soldiers' uniforms are shabby and non-descript. They look like a band of guerilla schleppers, not an army. Even Lieutenant Zuñiga undergoes a fall in his estate, from the raunchy commanding officer in his long coat and leather-holstered pistol to dirty-shirted beggar bearing a limp bouquet for Carmen after whom he still lusts. As far as Zuñiga is concerned, Carmen is consistent -- she always says NO.
And then there is José. Left his Mom at home with some ill feelings there. Joined the army. Made corporal; was broken to private for bad conduct. Fell for the Gypsy wench Carmen. Is embarrassed by Micaela's attentions to him; she wants to play house with him, apparently. He's guilty about his sick Mom at home. He's got this rose Carmen gave him for which he helped her escape after she had an altercation with another factory worker. He's got to go home to Mom so she can forgive him before she dies. But he promises Carmen that he'll return. The part of Micaela is completely superfluous after her first entrance during which those devilish soldiers try to lift her dress to get a better look at the business end of this country lass. She contributes nothing to the plot but she gets to sing a pretty aria all alone on stage. I had rather hoped that the break with tradition might include scissoring Micaela out of the libretto but some icons are untouchable, alas.
The Folkoperan's characterization of José is as close to the traditional as any: he is still the innocent village lad fallen under the spell of the smoky Gypsy, Carmen. They have a passionate onstage embrace that is sexily real for opera. But, she is playing him along to get what she wants. Carmen says she loves José but her early warning aria about taking a chance on love with the likes of Carmen hasn't penetrated his dense village brain. Until he wimps out. He is concerned about his honor, which will be violated if he runs away with Carmen. Never mind that José is no longer the innocent he once was back home with Mom. Ta-ra-ta-ta. His unit's bugler is calling him. It's the army or Carmen. He goes to Mom but swears to Carmen that he'll be back. All around José swirls this cast of dysfunctional gypsy characters with Carmen at the eye of the storm.
The Folkoperan works in a new tradition -- using a chamber orchestra with a complement of about thirty excellent young musicians - even the conductor is rotated. Its productions are sized for a smaller, more intimate setting. This production is radically different in its conception, which taken on its own terms made some sense only as long as it is not compared to the traditional Carmen. Brahms claimed to have seen twenty-six performances of the opera in 1876. Given that the perennial bachelor Brahms appeared to have his sexual appetites satisfied exclusively with prostitutes, even back then Carmen had charms other than the music. Still, Bizet's Carmen music is always gorgeous.
Folkoperan's production was closer to an expressionist vision of life and hard times among a group of outcasts. I wish I could say that this Carmen was a compelling and striking characterization. She was not. This Carmen was not fiery. Life (and the men in it) keeps trying to beat her down. She fights back until she realizes the futility of doing so given what the cards have told her. In the old days the cards said: "le mort". For the Folkoperan's Carmen they say: "döden". Those of us who glory in the French libretto, as bad as it really is, have no anchor in Swedish. But, knowing well the story and the action is enough to go on even with the presence of supertitles. Unfortunately, supertitles force you to interrupt watching the action, and reading the translation momentarily suspends your attention to the music. This is far from ideal for even the devoted operagoer. For my Swedish companion, hearing the opera in her native language gave it a presence and immediacy that only enhanced her experience.
No longer nine, I still see that sexy Risë and hear that cajoling Habañera. Now I've got hips. And how.
Copyright©2000 Janet I. Wasserman
