Russian <span class='italic'>Carmen</span>s and ‘Carmenism’: From Imperial Import to Ideological Benchmark

doi:10.1017/9781108674515.017

17 - Russian Carmens and ‘Carmenism’: From Imperial Import to Ideological Benchmark

from Part III - Localising Carmen

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020

Michelle Assay

Edited by

Richard Langham Smith and

Clair Rowden

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Richard Langham Smith: Affiliation:
Royal College of Music, London
Clair Rowden: Affiliation:
Cardiff University

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Summary

Despite mixed reactions to the first performance of Carmen on the Russian stage in 1878 in Saint-Petersburg, it rapidly became an indispensable part of the country’s operatic repertoire.

After the Revolution, the popularity of Carmen transcended the stage, lending its name to new perfumes and the Toreador’s tune to the ‘March of the Working-Peasants Army’. In theatre, meanwhile, new trends were aligning the opera with the tastes of proletarian audiences. Seemingly embodying the ideological triangle of realism, narodnost (closeness to the ‘people’) and – by some selective argumentation – optimism, Carmen provided a benchmark for new Soviet opera.

With Carmen’s popularity came the abstraction of the heroine from the operatic context. Borrowing from Shakespeare studies and the concept of ‘Hamletism’, this chapter will coin the term ‘Carmenism’ to refer to the tendency to interpret Carmen as a symbol, which in turn influences the interpretation of Carmen the opera, and thus keeps the music and its source alive for the appropriating nation or era. Through the prism of ‘Carmenism’ and using representative case studies, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how the various Russian/Soviet adaptations not only reflected the socio-political context of the country but also had a role in forming that culture.

Keywords

Bizet Carmen Russia Soviet opera Hamletism Stanislavsky appropriation Socialist Realism Carmencita Pushkin Aleko Aleksandr Blok Tchaikovsky

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Type: Chapter
Information: Carmen Abroad
Bizet's Opera on the Global Stage
, pp. 263 - 283

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108674515.017 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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References

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