7 - A New Performance for the New World: Carmen in America

Summary

Despite a mixed critical reception after Carmen’s American premiere in New York City on 23 October 1878, the opera quickly became a mainstay of the repertoire in the United States. American reviewers described Carmen as wicked yet compellingly seductive, Micaëla as a paragon of virtue and Don José as a stereotypically violent but manly Spaniard. They framed the opera as a cautionary tale of the dire consequences when women abandoned their traditional social roles. A close reading of the performing materials rented to American opera companies in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the Tams-Witmark Company reveals a performance tradition for Carmen which responded to and exaggerated the early critical reactions towards the main characters. Opera troupes used a combination of carefully placed cuts and stage pantomimes to perform an interpretation of the work that subtly tailored Bizet’s music to the American audience, which intensified Carmen’s vicious tendencies, highlighted Micaëla’s femininity and amplified Don José’s masculinity. The modifications to Carmen offer a case study that illustrates American operatic performance practices and illuminates issues of adaptation and cultural transfer in the transatlantic journey of European music to the United States.