2 - Carmen’s Second Chance: Revival in Vienna

Summary

The international fate of the archetypal Parisian and ‘southern’ opera Carmen was significantly influenced by a German translation first performed on 23 October 1875 in Vienna. Already before Bizet’s untimely death on 3 June of the same year, Franz Jauner, the newly appointed director of the Vienna Court Opera, had commissioned an adapted version of the opera for the Viennese stage. This first revival was subsequently performed 476 times at the Court Opera between 1875 and 1932, with several generations of performers spanning the decades. Today it is easy to forget, that the German translation of Carmen by Julius Hopp played a central role in the work’s subsequent reputation and diffusion, providing reference points for generations of critics and spectators throughout and beyond the German-speaking regions. This chapter looks at Carmen in transition between Paris and Vienna, between the Opéra-Comique and the Court Opera, discussing some of the discourses and materials involved in this transfer. It also considers how the Germanic Carmen moved within Vienna and beyond, crossing both urban and transnational borders in the first decades of its reception history beyond Paris.