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Carmen
In this French opera, Carmen, a
gypsy woman working in a cigar factory
in Seville, enchants and bewitches
the soldier Don José. He longingly
obeys her commands and helps
her to escape arrest. This action
places Don José in prison. Upon his release, he finds Carmen at the tavern
of Lillas Pastia and there decides
to cast his lot in with Carmen and
her smuggler friends, at the
cost of his military career.
Georges Bizet composed his opera Carmen following the old tradition of
setting operas in Spain, (more than 20
in Seville alone). It opened in 1875 at the Opera Comique in Paris.The
story-line
is more complicated than Prosper Merimée’s novel; more characters
were added and stereotypes
exaggerated by the libbrétists Meilhac
and Halevy. The original story had to be adapted to conform to the conventions
and expectations of the audience accustomed to bourgeois melodrama.
The result was a little too shocking for the family theater (Carmen was a public
enemy, a threat to law and order, conjuring revolutionary ghosts, and inevitably
had to die in the end, something unseen in the Opera Comique) but also a little
too
diluted and denaturalized for the purist,
who considered it basically a French
opera imbued with Spanish gypsy motifs, perhaps a Spanish reflection of a moment
in French history, after the failed revolution of the Paris Commune. It was not
a success, initially. Nevertheless, Carmen would soon become the most popular
opera of all time and the Spanish Gypsy
the enduring symbol of the exotiziced romantic construction of Spain, as can
testified by the numerous versions and resurrections of Carmen, on stage, on
screen, even on ice. Amazingly, as to
this day Carmen is still often claimed,
in academic discourse and in popular culture, to represent the pure,
unmediated spirit of Spain.
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March 20, 2006
Eissey Campus Theatre
Palm Beach Community College
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
 Ticket information
March 21, 2006
Coral Springs Center for the Arts
Coral Springs, FL
Ticket information
March 22, 2006
Broward Center for the
Performing Arts
Amaturo Theater
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Ticket information
March 23, 2006
FAU
University Center
Auditorium
Boca Raton, FL
Ticket information
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To learn more about
Carmen
be sure
to visit this website.
click here
To learn more about
Composer,
Georges Bizet,
be sure
to visit
this page.
click here
To learn more about
the
2007 Season of
click here
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