Changing the end of Carmen

I really like the idea, it feels very within Carmen’s abilities. Go for it!

Oh, and I look forward to a new ending of the Ring in which Brunnhilde contemplates the funeral pyre and says, "Kill myself for a man? Bu**er that", and walks off hand in hand with Waltraute.

I'm unable to read the article as my work internet has flagged it as Hate Speech, which you can take however you like. I don't see the harm in it though; it's like Shakespeare, it's been around for donkey's years, there'll be another production along in a couple of months, so why not feel free to make a few changes here and there? It'll either work or it won't.

Hamlet springs up again and marries Ophelia who was only joking.. They tried this in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t they? The script or libretto was there to be mucked about with. We have gone the other way. Text is triumphant. But in Opera the music 'speaks' too. So what does it say in Carmen?

My view on this is that in general opera houses should respect what the composer and librettist have written and mount operas according to what is specified in the score and in the libretto. I realise this is not always practical with some of Wagner's stage directions but with Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Bizet and the rest of the traditional operatic canon, I want to see on stage what the composer and librettist intended. If a director wants to change both the setting and the ending of 'Carmen' then he should find a composer and librettist to go back to Mérimée's novel and compose a new opera that covers the changes the director wants. And the same for all other cases where productions have made significant changes to the original operas – the source material is all readily available, so write a new opera with new music and new text to incorporate the changes. If they want to mount 'Carmen' as written by Meilhac, Halévy and Bizet then do so as it stands! Yes, I know that opera is apparently likely to wither and die if it becomes a series of museum pieces, but if that is to be its destiny then so be it and let Verdi, Puccini, Bizet and co have a dignified end and not be degraded and ridiculed by inappropriate 'modern' stagings of their masterpieces.

If you substantially change a work you should not be allowed to advertise it as the original work. I object to the Enid Blyton novels being changed, let alone this.

Brilliant observation, mallardo – you have hit the nail on the head!

The issue for me is whether, by changing the narrative of a piece for a given production, you are actually performing what the creator(s) intended.

Just because there were substantially altered versions of Shakespeare that persisted for years doesn't mean that Shakespeare would have approved of such changes or that audiences were being short-changed by not seeing what was actually written.

I have no issue with people writing response pieces to existing texts or doing a radical adaptation - as long as they are absolutely transparent about it. Audiences have a right to know what they are signing up for - is it the original or a version that may (or may not) be particularly closely aligned with what was originally on the page?

Radical resettings of operas can also fall into this category - such as the recent version of La Boheme set in space. This has nothing to do with what Puccini and his librettist intended or what was in the source material. It was - according to most reviews - very well sung - even if the production itself was a complete incomprehensible mess.

The fact that this production of Carmen has been upfront about the change to the ending is a positive. They are giving audiences that knowledge upfront so they can make an informed choice as to whether they want to attend.

But turning Carmen into a killer at the end still doesn't fit with the narrative drive of the piece or the source material - or, indeed, the use of various motifs through the score.

The same can be said for straightforward productions of certain pieces. I am still none the wiser about The Excursions of Mr Broucek!

I'm currently reading Tim Pigott-Smith's memoir, Do You Know Who I Am?, and I just came across a passage that struck me as relevant to this thread. He talks about having seen a production of The Taming of the Shrew, with Peggy Ashcroft and Peter O'Toole, in Stratford in 1959. [Pause for a moment of silent awe at the thought of what that production must have been like.] Then he says this:

"The Shrew has recently been bogged down in deadening sexual politics which kill the central motor of the play. You cannot allow modern moral judgements to subvert the ethics of a play. The racism of The Merchant of Venice might not be to our liking, but it is the play, and if you don't engage with it the play does not happen. Inevitably, you filter things through your own contemporary mindset, but you change the ethical motors within a play at your peril."

Oh my….Katherine Hepburn.

























Sorry what was the tread about?

First of all Carmen has never been one of my favourite operas and there have been few productions of it over the years that I've enjoyed. I'm going to see the latest new production at ROH in two weeks and the pre-publicity is intriguing (alarming?):



'...Barrie Kosky's interpretation takes a provocative look at the many facets of this iconic woman....some cut passages have been restored, others amended and the dialogue replaced by narration.'

It's the last bit that sounds ominous.