ARTicles vol.4 i.1: Director’s Note

I wanted to stage a piece specifically for the group of singers I work with, and I wanted it to be about passion. And so came Carmen: a grand opera: populist and muscular – a gorgeous drama. I had seen Peter Brook’s beautiful reduction of the opera years ago and I was hesitant at first. After all, why Carmen? Why now? We went at it blindly, four artists engulfed by this passionate opera. Bradley (Don José), Christina (Carmen), Jennifer (Micaëla/Frasquita), and myself. We started working, scrutinizing, listening. Others joined us and soon there we were in Seville, “Strange people, the people here! All pass by, all come, all go.”

Carmen the migrant, Don José the displaced, and Micaëla the orphan. The world is a square where passers pass – its inhabitants are women and soldiers. The social background of forced labor and the mix of cultures is the fire that fuels the whole opera. Low wages, social unrest, and repression are predictable bedfellows. The characters are transients – people who have no identity and who are on the move. Don José is one of them: a would-be priest who became a soldier, in exile from the Basque country, half in France and half in Spain, without a nation. Then there is Micaëla: the orphan, the messenger, who has but one country – Don José. Micaëla journeys from innocence through fears of being afraid, to the betrothed widow. She grows simply and fully, like jasmine. Her life with Don Jose was meant to be, but life would rather it be what it becomes. And so, Carmen. Like a perfume composed of all life’s essences, she passes, embracing every moment. Don José is one of those moments, and he is quickly suffocated. There is an end. Jealously and possession come to stab her. She chokes on her own scent.