Carmen and the Staging of Spain Recasting Bizet's Opera in the Belle Epoque Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music Series

Carmen and the Staging of Spain explores the Belle Époque fascination with Spanish entertainment that refashioned Bizet's opera and gave rise to an international "Carmen industry." Authors Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz challenge the notion of Carmen as an unchanging exotic construct, tracing the ways in which performers and productions responded to evolving fashions for Spanish style from its 1875 premiere to 1915. Focusing on selected realizations of the opera in Paris, London and New York, Christoforidis and Kertesz explore the cycles of influence between the opera and its parodies; adaptations in spoken drama, ballet and film; and the panorama of flamenco, Spanish dance, and musical entertainments. Their findings also uncover Carmen's dynamic interaction with issues of Hispanic identity against the backdrop of Spain's changing international fortunes. The Spanish response to this now most-Spanish of operas is illuminated by its early reception in Madrid and Barcelona, adaptations to local theatrical genres, and impact on Spanish composers of the time. A series of Spanish Carmens, from opera singers Elena Sanz and Maria Gay to the infamous music-hall star La Belle Otero, had a crucial influence on the interpretation of the title role. Their stories provide a fresh context for the book's reappraisal of leading Carmens of the era, including Emma Calvé and Geraldine Farrar.

Michael Christoforidis lectures in musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish music and dance, and its impact on Western culture, and is the author of Manuel de Falla and Visions of Spanish Music (Routledge, 2017). Elizabeth Kertesz is a research fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. Having written her PhD on the critical reception of Ethel Smyth's operas, her current research interests include Spanish-themed music and theatrical entertainment, and film music from the Belle Époque into the early twentieth century.