Carmen and the Staging of Spain: Recasting Bizet's Opera in the Belle Epoque (Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music) - Hardcover

Rigorously researched and illustriously illustrated, this volume turns up all kinds of interesting details about Carmen's immediate afterlife-as an opera and also in transformations into burlesque, ballet and parody, not least in its re-importation into Spain herself." (Richard Langham Smith, Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres FRCM FRSA, Research Professor, Royal College of Music)

An impressively researched exploration of the multilayered early performance history of Carmen, including its iterations in parodies, the music hall, sheet music, and recordings. The authors pay tribute to the intelligence with which successive performers molded the Carmen role to suit local tastes. (Jo Labanyi, Professor of Spanish, New York University)

Carmen and the Staging of Spain explores the Belle Époque fascination with Spanish entertainment that refashioned Bizet's opera and gave rise to an international "Carmen industry." Authors Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz challenge the notion of Carmen as an unchanging exotic construct, tracing the ways in which performers and productions responded to evolving fashions for Spanish style from its 1875 premiere to 1915.

Focusing on selected realizations of the opera in Paris, London and New York, Christoforidis and Kertesz explore the cycles of influence between the opera and its parodies; adaptations in spoken drama, ballet and film; and the panorama of flamenco, Spanish dance, and musical entertainments. Their findings also uncover Carmen's dynamic interaction with issues of Hispanic identity against the backdrop of Spain's changing international fortunes.

The Spanish response to this now most-Spanish of operas is illuminated by its early reception in Madrid and Barcelona, adaptations to local theatrical genres, and impact on Spanish composers of the time. A series of Spanish Carmens, from opera singers Elena Sanz and Maria Gay to the infamous music-hall star La Belle Otero, had a crucial influence on the interpretation of the title role. Their stories provide a fresh context for the book's reappraisal of leading Carmens of the era, including Emma Calvé and Geraldine Farrar.