For a while I lost interest in Carmen, primarily because opera performances are simply too expensive in this country. To me the point of opera is the whole stage presentation along with the music. I didn’t just want to hear the music. If you couldn’t afford to go see a stage production, why bother?
But when I read the original novella by Mérimée again, I found a lot more in the story than most stagings display. In the original story the character of Don José is much more sinister. He’s really a nut job that Carmen happens upon. Carmen herself is a shady character who accepts a life of crime as her lot in life, but I saw her independence not as an example of some kind of women’s liberation but as a needed strength in a very hard world, a world I thought I knew.
I see Carmen as a young, tough Dominican woman who has done the best she can in an environment that is ready to use her and abuse her if she allows it. But she is also tired of this life and sees, in José, a love interest that might be her way out. Having lived most of my life in this same kind of setting, I knew I was feeling Carmen in a big way.
The idea rested in the back of my head for years until, one day after watching yet another light version of the opera, I happened into my local bodega to buy milk. There was an animated conversation among the three cashiers-mostly in Spanish, with a smattering of English-and a lot of finger pointing toward the door where someone who had offended them had just gone through. I was reminded of the fight scene between the factory girls at the beginning of the opera. And they were much closer in my mind to the real factory girls from Seville than the carefully gowned women in the opera I had seen. Also, they were all very young, as I thought the girls should have been. But where was my Carmen?
Then the door opened and my Carmen walked in! She was beautiful, young, and pissed! Some dude had done her wrong, and she proceeded to tell the other girls. I wanted to rush right home and start writing.
When approaching my own version I gave myself several rules. The first was to respect my characters! Carmen would not be flirtatious simply because she was Latina or just to satisfy the story line. She needed to have fully rounded human desires. The second was to respect the community in which the story takes place.
The music to Carmen is readily available through the Internet. Recorded versions can be rented and the original score is out of copyright, so school and small theater performances are quite possible. I still love Bizet’s original music, but I didn’t think much of the lyrics; I felt the words needed to be changed to fit a modern setting. One set of lyrics I really didn’t like was “The Toreador Song.” As a young writer I was commissioned to do a magazine piece on bullfighting and had attended my first one in Lima, Peru. It wasn’t at all to my taste and I haven’t seen a bullfight since. I think of Escamillo more as a businessman with the bravado of a bullfighter who has his hand in a number of fields. But it is Escamillo who raps over the background and who represents, to Carmen, yet another opportunity to move out of the cycle of despair that is so much a part of inner-city life.
The ending of Carmen is tragic, and the music Bizet created for it, which I have called the “Destiny Theme,” portends the fatal drama. I was so moved by this music that, as I wrote, it was constantly on my mind. But it was one of the pieces written by Bizet to separate the acts of the opera, called Entr’actes, that I felt expressed Carmen’s character even more. This piece, often played as a flute solo with a harp or guitar background, is beautiful and hopeful-as I saw Carmen-and yet there is a haunting melancholy to it as well.
This piece reflects how I see Carmen, a young Latina woman searching for love but finding, instead, yet another man willing to sacrifice her for his own very dark reasons. I asked my friend, Kwame Brandt-Pierce, an arranger and composer, to add a Latino beat to this piece. Over a snack of sangria, Italian bread, and black olives, my editor and I worked with the young composer/arranger to decide how we would handle this portion of the music. His arrangements of Bizet are spectacular and stirring and will undoubtedly become part of the legend that is Carmen. You can download them at www.egmontusa.com or www.walterdeanmyers.net.
Stories work because they touch the hearts of the audience they are trying to reach. I hope this version of Carmen touches your heart.
About the Music
The story of Carmen-as are the stories of all operas-is told in many ways, each having its own purpose, meaning, and flair. A composer learns of, or imagines a story that he or she would like to tell. Perhaps he found a novella or play that inspired him, or she came across a historical event that intrigued her? Or perhaps even a melody suggested a story?
Once an opera is started, there are many elements for its creators to consider. There is a libretto, which is the writing out of the story, complete with dialogue. The dialogue might be spoken or, in most operas, sung.
Carmen began as a short novel and was later performed as a play. Something in the story attracted the young composer Georges Bizet (1838-1875) and he began working on the piece, completing it in 1874.
The libretto, the text of an opera, tells the story in a straightforward manner. The composer understands that the play will be acted, and he must rely on the writer to give the opera sufficient action to make the viewing interesting. So the libretto tells the story, but that is not the only way the story is told. It is also conveyed through the actors and by their costumes and the set design.
Sometimes there is dancing in an opera, and the dancers contribute to the movement and entertainment of the work, but they also aid in the laying out of the story.
However, it is the music, the score, that is the chief medium of an opera. The score must reflect the emotions being portrayed onstage, and at this, Bizet, in Carmen, absolutely rocked!
Another way of learning the story of an opera, which is often overlooked, is in the programs handed out to a theater audience. If you don’t know the story of an opera, and you can’t understand the words, how will you know what’s going on? Some opera performances today have subtitles on a monitor, but if you don’t know the plot before you take your seat, it’s difficult to appreciate the full range of the opera you’re seeing.
When working on this adaptation, I knew that there were things I wanted to say. I wanted to depict Carmen as a tough Latina woman, but one with feelings I’ve seen in the inner cities across America. Yes, she is tough, but she is also very, very human. She needs love and affection as we all do. I looked at what Bizet was doing with the music and the story, and I knew I could translate it to this year, this time.
Although the original French lyrics created by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy are dated, the music still works. If a different setting is used, then the words are sometimes changed to fit that setting. I chose a modern urban setting to write Carmen but always with the original in mind.
Songs
All music composed by Georges Bizet
1. El Ritmo del Barrio (variation)
Arranged by Kwame Brandt-Pierce
2. La Habanera
3. La Seguidilla
4. Destiny Theme
5. The Toreador Song
6. Love Has Flown Away
7. Love Has Flown Away (variation)
Arranged by Kwame Brandt-Pierce
“El Ritmo del Barrio” (variation on a theme from Carmen) Arranged by Kwame Brandt-Pierce
Kwame is a young composer-arranger. I asked him to put together some arrangements of Bizet’s music that would reflect a modern musical scene. Here he does a spirited and rousing rendition of one of the opera’s pieces, an entr’acte, by adding merengue rhythm and instrumentation. This version reminded me of the section of Harlem that was called Spanish Harlem, with its mixture of music from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, which is why I use it as the “rhythm of the neighborhood” in this book.