Anyone for Bizet?
Hey, local folks — anyone thinking of seeing this? Student production of Carmen, free, outdoors, this weekend and next. Hearing it in English is going to be a little weird, but I’m still planning on going to see it this Saturday night if it doesn’t rain.
(Update several days later: Well, that was a nice evening, oddity of hearing it in English or no. I ended up taking off at intermission thanks to allergies acting up, so I missed the second half. But the singer who sang Carmen was quite good; I hope she keeps it up after she graduates. Plus I’d always thought the courtyard where they staged it would be an interesting place for an outdoor performance of something or other, so it was fun to see it turned into Lillas Pastia’s tavern. Of course, now I can’t get "Les tringles des sistres tintaient" out of my head.)
Well, I’ll be interested to see how you find it. I’d think something as familiar as Carmen is going to be pretty odd in English, and the singing always depends with student productions. One of the guys in the production is in my department, but I have no idea how he or the others actually sound. I won’t be going until the following weekend, after the draft of my seminar paper o’doom is (somewhat) complete.
Ugh, papers o’doom. My sympathies! I’ll post a follow-up sometime when I’m not frantically finishing my taxes.
This evening I made it out to see Carmen. I though it was really great that they put this together and the Carmen was indeed quite good, both with the music and in doing the character. As much as I tried not to notice, the orchestra was quite bad, distracting in places. They particularly mangled one of my favorite moments, their little bit after the habanera. The staging and costumes were charming. I particularly liked the Lillas Pastia character, and also Frasquita and Mercedes in short dresses with guns.
The outdoor setting was really nice, and different. Leaves me wanting to be very “spanish,” that is to have some manzanilla, (whatever that might be) and do something other than reading silly books. Ah well.