Mood:
lyricalNow Playing: The "Habanera"
Topic: Entertaining Insights
It only occurred to me after seeing it for the fourth time, but in retrospect Carmen has one of the weakest overall storylines of any opera I've ever seen.
I won't go into little points, or anything, but take another popular opera that is (musically) inferior to Bizet's work: La Boheme. There's a story: right parts development, pacing and a suitably sad ending giving the audience a hearty spoonful of mono no aware, if you will.
...god, I sound like an a**hole right now, don't I?
Anyway: in Carmen the problem, mainly, is that the lead character is an idiot, values 'freedom' to the point of running right into a man's knife 'cause he won't let her go see a bullfight, didn't avoid the man despite being warned about her impending death repeatedly via tarot cards, and she is, ultimately, not a poetically tragic figure, but a bitch.
It's one of the only operatic death scenes where I want to start clapping AS the knife finds flesh, and not after the ensuing mourning overture.
Hell: Madame Butterfly (I'm stuck on Puccini, I guess...) evokes more sympathetic emotional response from me in five minutes than Carmen does in three and a half hours.
Carmen's only saving grace is that it has, hands down, absolutely the best f**king musical score in operatic history. Makes up for the terrible story enough to make it my favorite opera, anyway.
But in conclusion: story ain't everything, but it certainly helps...
