Good morning good noon good afternoon good evening good night, it is your Aulinda Wei again here bring you the new episode of opera where's.
It is a brief apology. I just finished recording this podcast a minute ago and I do think I must apologize. I do want to sincerely apologize for what I’m saying in this podcast, not because I felt sorry for criticizing Carmen and Carrie Cracknell but finding myself doing the same thing with Cracknell. Say too much without any valuable points.
If you do want to continue listening, please go on.
It is 2 AM again, I’m sitting in front of my Macbook Air M2 doing the podcast. I do need more sleep hours but whatever, I am satisfied with my three and half hour sleep. Is life, you gotta do this.
As I said in the last episode, it is all about Carmen today. Bizet’s Carmen. Carmen, the ultimate classic opera. Even if you are not into opera at all, you’ll still recognize the name in an instant, it is just so famous that there are so many things and Company names after it. The arias Habanera (singing) and Toreador Song (singing). All in all, it is pure classical opera, you know it.
Another thing is its overture, it is kinda like the theme of the opera, whether it is the variations or the original. To be relevant and irrelevant at the same time. But that overture just reminds me of Aria Codes, the opera podcast co-produced by WNYC and met. Carmen’s overture serves as the start of every episodes. You'll hear that 哒哒哒哒哒哒哒哒 every time. Even though Area code is more like people who are relevant to an area that talks about their stories , like an interview, that's what inspired me to start this podcast.
Back to opera where time. Let me explain a bit of the story of Carmen, it is set in Spanish, there’s a girl Carmen who flirts with everyone she’s interested , there’s a man, Don Jose who thinks himself is in love with Carmen, but Carmen doesn't give back the same amount of love to him. So he gets mad and kills Carmen. Story ends. This story was written three centuries ago, where the whole society practiced patriarchy. Opera was for loyalties and riches, people acted like Don Jose, extremely mad and using the now-day word, canceled Carmen. You know, even though those men are evil, satisfying themselves with whatever they can, they still consider women as their property. Women like Carmen were seen as sinful.
It is kinda an interesting topic of why Carmen is so famous, the fact that it is a Spanish story that French people wrote is hilarious. You wrote a very story about people from another country and that story eventually got canceled and refused by people in your country. Nowadays we have a word for it———-racism. We are not going to talk about feminism nor the musical parts of Carmen yet but the story isn't about showing a kind of privilege and prejudice against a smaller country. You know, Carmen was created in 1874 during the French Third Republic period, they got a lot of colonies, pretty strong. This is kinda like a cultural bullying against spanish. If you want to create something that you do consider people at your time won’t be able to accept, why are you making the main character a foreigner to your native country?
Back to Carmen and the question why it is famous, despite Carmen itself having the outstanding and ahead composition and libretto works. I do consider a part of it is people’s Psychological compensation mechanism, after accidentally shits on the right opera, those white men decide to repair and do something. Of course, Bizet was already dead by that point. Enough for the humanity party, Carmen is still a really great opera despite me, as a 14 years old late Z generation kinda criticized french people a bit. But I never said that it doesn’t deserve the reputation, it is great. And all of which I’m saying is based on a present perspective and kinda ignoring the societal context and social environment. I don’t think Bizet can see what I see as someone who died in 1875.
If you don’t want to listen to 14 year old Miss.Wei’s 15 minute little philosophical discussion, please jump right into …….
People always have implicit bias, especially creators of any kinds of literary and art works. As what we are saying, you can find the silhouette of a creator inside of their works. One’s work must include some sorts of themselves and how they see the world in certain ways. I don’t know if you guys are into movies or not, at least I’m not. So today my lovely friend, also one of my podcasts' audience, gave a special shout out to her. Told me that the Golden Globe Awards was hosted just a few days ago, and of course,Christopher Edward Nolan’s Oppenheimer won. Why am I saying that in an opera podcast, is because the editing and filming techniques Nolan used to persuade the postmodern narrative kinda interest me, postmodernism is an intellectual stance that rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning. Credit to wikipedia. That’s a weird sentence to understand, in my own words, is, you spend time on a production, you sit there for a couple hours, and you exit. You know nothing before and you learned nothing after. Is like drinking water, no taste, no meaning. The meaning of a movie is created when you start to have your understanding of the director’s purpose, and you get the meaning of a movie that the director persuades you to get. But postmodernism is totally againsting that, the director is not allowed to include their thoughts inside of their productions, rationality and objectivity are given to the audience. Postmodernism is anti-narrative, a radical refutation of Enlightenment reason and a nihilistic attitude toward truth. This serves as a complete foil to traditional operas.
Too much random philosophy and ideology here. Bizet, and the librettists, Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhacof course, are humans, so they included themselves into Carmen. And one of the missions of us, as the audience, is to react, say something when we see something, that’s the meaning of critiques and why they exist.
So, as one of the modern people, it is Carrie Cracknell who was commissioned by the met to reproduce Bizet’s Carmen. Cracknell conveys her thoughts on Carmen, she wants to “de-romanized” the death of Carmen, she wants to add the modern day feminist perspective to Carmen, and also the free spirit of a white female citizen who hasn’t experienced that much of prejudice in terms of family background or social classes. She wants to inspire the audience to think more on what we can elaborate on the old (ancient) operas. I guess her point is to change those inequality and bias components written by respectful white old men (even thought Bizet’s Carmen was very unsuccessful but please do not ignore the fact that he’s pretty famous and have reached many resources), those stigmatization and discriminatory content created by the high threshold that exists in the opera industry from above and below exist in an old and now-day most famous operas. Changed the class-divided and patriarchy period work.
Cracknell’s intention sounds pretty good, at least there isn't anything that we can judge about the original intention of this reproduction, she tried. But you know, it is life, there always has been those perception versus reality moments, the more you are saying, the more you have to take. Responsibilities always come after words, do consider the amount of work after every sentence.
Carmen is actually one of the easy but hard pieces to reproduce. It is easy because people from three centuries ago already built a solid base for you, it is hard because if something is classic and famous, there has to be a reason. Why do you think your one or two years of thinking can easily overdraw the brightnesses of the old piece? You, or we are talking about the privilege of men over women, riches over poor, and upper classes over low classes. But what Carcknell is practicing at the met is that kind of privilege a modern person can have over the elder person. If you don’t have a certain respect over this point and determination of whether you can do well on this reproduction, why did you accept this commission and do all of that.
Here’s the problem, for hundreds of years some people often thought, Don Jose as the tearful figure who deserved the audience's sympathies. It was all because a woman played with his love, he does love that woman so deeply and he doesn't know how to deal with it, so in some way. But what we are saying without present perspective is that Don Jose is the patrichatry figure who thinks women belong to him. It is not only love but the sense of control that a man has over a woman, the death of Carmen was all because Don Jose is mad that he can't control Carmen and he does think he loves Carmen. That’s the “de-romanized” Don Jose’s motivation for killing Carmen. If you observe closely, some aspects of Don Jose’s traits were directly given. Don Jose is pretty selfish, and he doesn’t even realize that trait of himself.
Carmen never belongs to a man, she’s the forward-thinking woman of her time. She’s free, it is the theme. CARMEN IS A FREE WOMAN. She loves who she loves, forgets who she wants to forget. And that’s why the opera Carmen got disputes after the premiere. Even Don Jose killed her, but Carmen never died. You can physically kill Carmen, but if she survives again, she’ll still, definitely just keep what she was doing before. Carmen symbolized a kind of spirit that women are able to persuade nowadays.
Things are two-sided, so does Carmen, you can see some sort of shades of the Feminist Enlightenment but also a little bit of the justifications of Don Jose’s homicides. I mean, it is still based on your interpretation and yourself.
I swear, there are no more philosophies in my podcast, I have no idea about what I am saying, and I don’t think I’ll have a career as a philosopher when I grow up.
In conclusion, Carmen is a great opera that contains feminist ideas but from a present perspective, still can be better.
So, Carrie Carcknell was there, and wanted to do something.
That’s what she did.
A contemporary American industrial town.
Carmen is wearing jeans.
Nothing else.
You say those kinds of fancy sentences, you want every normal audience to be able to understand your americanized Carmen story that reflects on social and gender inequalities so the meat can sell more tickets while you are being praised.
I, at least I, can’t learn or interpret anything more from this new production. The rearrangements are meaningless to me.
Are there any possibilities that we misunderstood Carrie Cracknell just like people from three centuries ago misunderstood Bizet?
I do think I can survive more than 5 years, so I’ll be a little bit arrogant and answer this question with the perception of my future myself. A straight forward No.
If something can be remembered and regain reputation, there have to be some traits of it, unique traits. It has to be special in some way otherwise it will be forgotten in time. Can you see anything from Carcknell’s version that differs from the past production of Carmens? I am not talking about the setting but the overall core spirit of the opera. This is a new production that will be forgotten. Like all of the new productions which have failed. Met promotes it, regarded as important for a season, and disappears and is forgotten quietly.
If you can’t do something that’s really new and refreshing for the audience, please just do the original one and save us, the audience from random jeans Carmen, give me my Romani Carmen back please… Don’t say things if you can’t do it, please, Carcknell, learn this. If you don't have the ability of turning an old, classic opera into a fresh, modern opera with the value of present perspective, just give the position to someone else please.
Enough for Cracknell and all of my life philosophies. Let’s go back to the performance.
One thing that does save me from this production is Aigul Akhmetshina, she’s so pretty and despite her beauty, her voice is just brilliant. We all know how famous she is but this is the first time I've ever seen her in an opera house. I mean, it is my first time seeing her but whatever. There is literally nothing you can say about her singing, I love it. Bravaaaaaa.. everything comes with a but, Akhmetshina is a little bit young for Carmen. I’m not saying that there’s any question about her singing or acting. Her face, she looks too nice to be a playgirl, an American girl who flirts with men and never fails. Akhmetshina is only 27 years old. But she’s definitely the best Carmen at this moment. I love her. Please, Akhmetshina saved this opera. She delighted the stage. She’s the queen of tonight.
The other singers are also really good, I do have to admit the fact that because Aigul Akhmetshina is too starring, I didn’t pay that much attention to the other singers. But on the other hand that proves that they are doing fine, at least didn’t make any mistakes that are worth me saying.
I don’t wanna say every detail or points about the productionI, I mean: 1.it is debatable if this Carmen deserve that or not; 2.details of the new production is what you are looking for if you are already familiar with this classic; 3 and the major point is: I do have difficulties remembering all of them. Let’s just talk about things that interest me.
A minor thing that I want to say is the triangle, I mean, not the triangle in geometry but as an instrument. The temple was off, go back to your college please whomever was playing it.
Judging again, the reproduction doesn’t excite me, from the words of the friends’ friend, it is one of the reproductions that you have to, just close your eyes and listen. so boring it is just. You find a Carmen in jeans who does those Taylor Swift American pop music dances, no offense to pop music lovers and swifties.
They set those artificial light bonds in the background to stimulate a sense of motion, smart, way better than the Dead Man Walking production team who used the poor projection and a chair. talks about projection, one thing that I’m still wondering right now is why they indirect a very consciousness projection before every act. I don’t understand not getting it at all, especially what’s the meaning of it. I mean to me it seems like people are walking at a slow pace. That’s all. If you watched Carmen and would like to provide your interpretation, please just email me.
The rotating containers and the iron blicher in acts 3 and 4 reminds me of Nabucco, they just really love having things rotating. Especially they also got fire, real fire in the beginning of act 3. I wanna talk about the Co2 level in the theater again just like what I did in the Nabucco episode. But however even though the rotating design seems weird but that does add on to the opera, opera singers don’t just stand alone and sing but they are moving.
Haiyaa, back to my asian accent, Escamillo in this version of Carmen looks like the boss of a criminal gang who just learned how to use a cell phone, nah. I don't know if you guys know or not the movie series The godfather, Kyle Ketelsen seems like a 2000s discotheque version of Marlon Brando.
Overall, if I’m a person who never watched opera before and went to Carmen, too bad too sad I’ll never step inside of the met opera ever again cuz I had enough pictures of myself with the chandelier. The only thing that is worth the price, the singers. An accurate statement from my friends’ friend, “just close your eyes and listen”.
If you would like to hear Aigul Akhmetshina, I can’t find any other reason why you are there except for Aigul.
I comment and judge a lot of Carcknell Carrie and whatever ideologies and philosophies in the episode, because it is all based on my personal perspectives. I do expect that you think I said a lot of debatable stuff and have counter statements or different opinions for them. Or you just like this version of Carmen and find something valuable. If you would like to talk to me and exchange your perspective please feel free to email me, it is aulindatang@gmail.com.
Thank you so much for listening to this long episode and have a nice day!