THE ORIGINS OF CARMEN
Georges Bizet based his 1875 opéra-comique about a wily Basque “gypsy” on a little-known novella by Prosper Mérimée. In turn, Mérimée’s Carmen was based on a firsthand story the Countess de Montijo told him on a visit to Spain in 1830. The Countess’s heroine was not a “bohémienne,” but a Balkan girl. Mérimée was a trained linguist, studying the Romani language, so he changed Carmen’s background to something more exotic. In the original short story, Carmen robs a Basque soldier, Don Jose Navarro, who becomes enchanted by this seductress and assists her escape from jail. He is court-martialed and after his release from the brig, immediately runs back to her. She convinces the love-sick soldier to abandon his post, join her band of thieves and live a life of freedom. Jealous and hot-headed, Don Jose soon commits multiple murders, including stabbing his former commanding officer and Carmen’s husband, and then assumes control of the Roma gang. (Yes, originally Carmen was married to the gang’s leader!) When Carmen leaves Don Jose for a famous toreador, he kills her and lovingly buries her body in her favorite spot in the forest.
The narrator of Mérimée’s story also happens to be a French linguist travelling through Spain studying various dialects, and one night at a remote inn he encounters a mysterious man who steals his pocket watch. Weeks later the police contact the narrator and tell him he can retrieve his property at the jail, and that the thief is to be executed at dawn in the “Spanish style,” by garroting. The narrator objects to such a harsh sentence and is informed that the pickpocket is an infamous gang leader, Don Jose Navarro, guilty of multiple homicides, robbery, and extortion. The narrator asks to meet the convict, and the bulk of the story is Don Jose recounting his sordid demise, which all began when he met Carmen.
Thus, the character of Carmen is presented as a reflection of a reflection, refracted through this kaleidoscopic story within a story within a story. While Bizet’s version has a few major differences from the sources, he magnifies Carmen’s elusive sense of mystery and intangibility. In the opera, Carmen reveals almost nothing of herself, responding to various men’s pleas for intimacy by evasively singing and dancing for them. She is a house of mirrors who distorts, disorients, and destroys the men who attempt to deconstruct her architecture, while the men who honor her as she is remain unscathed.
Unfortunately, Bizet died after the 33rd performance of his opera, completely unaware that this would end up being one of the most performed works in the repertory, and whose melodies would remain instantly recognizable. Bizet unwittingly created a title character, like Hamlet, that people all over the world know -- even people who have never set foot in an opera house. Carmen has exploded out of the story that conceived her and opera that gave her voice, and now exists as a timeless cultural icon. The spirit of Carmen can traverse decades and nations and be reincarnated into different genres and forms. With each new iteration Carmen transforms herself, and boldly challenges the norms and assumptions of whichever society and epoch has conjured her.
THE HISTORY OF THE OPERA
The long-standing success of the opera Carmen could never have been predicted. Bizet had won the extremely prestigious Prix de Rome in music yet struggled to get any theatre to present his work. (By contrast, the painter Jacques-Louis David had failed to win the prize in painting three years in a row and considered suicide. Manet and Degas would fail as well, as would Ravel, even after five attempts.) It was Bizet’s two librettists, Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac, who secured the commission at the Opéra Comique, since they had a string of box office successes writing the “books” for Jacques Offenbach’s operettas.
Rehearsals got off to a rocky start. Orchestra members complained that some of the music was unplayable, and singers objected to having to dance and smoke while singing, preferring instead to stand still and face front. (A practice we stage directors refer to as “park and bark.”) There were so many revisions to the score and libretto that to this day there remains no definitive version. Each iteration of Carmen must be reconstructed and reimagined -- some use spoken dialogue while others have sung recitatives between the musical numbers. The score remains as mutable and elusive as Carmen herself.
As rehearsals progressed, controversy brewed. The two co-directors of the Opéra Comique, Adolphe de Leuven and Camille du Locle, furiously fought about allowing such a risqué story to be presented at their “family” theatre. Bizet and his librettists promised to tone down the murder scene by having it overshadowed by a lively “triumphal procession, ballets and joyous fanfares.”
The premiere on March 3, 1875, started well, and de Leuven and du Locle were reassured by the applause awarded the first three acts. But in Act IV an icy chill seemed to envelope the theatre as the climactic end of the opera approached. It slowly dawned on the anxious producers that the procession had long passed, there was no ballet, and the offstage fanfare was only providing an ironic background to the painfully prolonged scene of domestic abuse that would end in a brutal onstage murder. And this violent scene was being presented to a theater packed with children and families who came expecting a light romantic divertimento, with a dash of Spanish spice. What Bizet served up was a picante dish of unbridled female sexuality, championed by an unrepentant heroine espousing free love, who was then realistically murdered by her psychotic ex-lover in front of the horrified audience.
Opening night of Carmen was declared an utter disaster by most of the press. One critic wrote that the public was shocked by the “drastic realism of the action” and the “defective morality” of the “low standing” characters. Reviews slammed the amoral seductress and found no virtue in her honesty. However, one lone critic praised Bizet for presenting “real men and women,” not the usual Opéra Comique “puppets.” Massenet, Offenbach, and Gounod were also in attendance, but we know nothing of their reactions.
Houses remained half full during the initial run even though the theatre “papered the house” with comps, being outsold by Verdi’s Requiem which ran on alternate nights. In a reprise later that year, Tchaikovsky caught a performance and wrote: “Carmen is a masterpiece in every sense of the word…one of those rare creations which expresses the efforts of a whole musical epoch.”
Bizet was a heavy smoker, and often complained of throat “angina” and abscesses in his windpipes. Depressed over the cool reception of Carmen, he went to his country home in Bougival to have a restorative dip in the Seine. The next day he came down with a high fever and had a heart attack. While celebrating his wedding anniversary two days later, he suffered a second, fatal heart attack. On June 3rd, 1875, Bizet was 36 years old and died having no idea that he had unleashed a character that would challenge the world to this day.
CARMEN TODAY
Just as we must reconstruct the right score for each production, we must reconceive the right Carmen for each period. While originally perceived as amoral, Carmen is completely true to herself and speaks only truth to her lovers. In the opera she says: “Jamais n’a menti” / “I have never lied,” and in fact, she never lies once. (This is in complete contrast to her male libertine counterpart, Don Giovanni, who can only succeed by lying, cheating, and abusing his female victims.) Carmen remains a constant, while Don Jose goes from obedient soldier to deserter to smuggler to murderer.
Just before Don Jose brutally stabs Carmen, she says to him that she does not love him anymore. It is neither a threat nor a taunt — it is merely a statement of fact. A statement so true, coming from a woman so honest about her sexuality, that Don Jose cannot accept it. He reacts with violence, hoping to kill the truth. Truth can be shocking and astounding and even destructive, but truth cannot be killed.
Carmen embodies this notion of unkillable truth. She is a female Dionysius, whose bold sexuality causes utter destruction to any resistant male psyche, before she regenerates. Her body may die but her spirit will emerge again, in yet another incarnation. In the early 20th century, she was reborn by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss as Salome, and then again by Wedekind, Alban Berg and Louise Brooks as Lulu. In 1940’s film noir, she appeared as a femme fatale, coolly played by Lauren Bacall and Lana Turner. In pop music, she emerged as Madonna, and Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga -- pushing her honesty, her sexuality, and her truth against whatever social boundaries each period attempted to constrain her with.
Bizet hit on a taboo so dangerous and so deeply entrenched in our culture that his Carmen continues to resonate through time and space. As long as one man is threatened by Carmen’s unvarnished truth, this masterpiece will continue to shock and challenge audiences, just as it did on that chilly March night in Paris, 151 years ago.