Black Opera

by Naomi Andre

  Hearing Price talk about her memories of being Bess opens up a suppressed and hidden image of blackness that many black women in the United States have internalized. Bess is the outsider who works hard to fit in, to assimilate, or at least not to be the outsider. Though the neighborhood of Catfish Row is all black, it is not a far leap to see Bess as a metaphor for always being outside the norm. She shows us what it is like never to feel fully accepted. In a palpable way, this makes her connection to Porgy even stronger through Porgy’s poignant acceptance of his role as an outsider due to his physical limitations and disability.52

  Bess’s presence proves that there are different expectations for some women (women who fall within expected norms, for instance) than for other women (who fulfill marginalized stereotypes). When it is so rare to see any opera that has at least one compelling, fleshed-out black character, the all-black environment in Porgy and Bess highlights multiple types of women, and it is hard for any black woman in the audience not to see herself at least partially represented in the different permutations of black womanhood presented in these roles. Race definitely matters, but as the presumed all-white environment of most operas allows a “universal” connection among the audience, so too does the figure here of Bess as a doomed heroine bid all women to examine her plight. It is not as though her blackness is irrelevant; it is just that everyone is invited to see, understand, and accept or condemn her. Regardless of what these judgments will be, they are—without a doubt—shaped by racial and gendered experience of the observer. Bess provides not only Leontyne Price the opportunity to say “Bess was already half of me,” such a powerful role in this opera allows all of us to see things from a vantage point that includes at least some of the marginalized experiences of being an outsider.

  Listening to Leontyne Price discuss her interpretation, performance, and internalization of the role of Bess brings together the three central themes of inquiry in this study: who is in the story, who tells the story, and who watches the story. As a Southern black woman born a few years before Porgy and Bess was written, her connection to the historical context, her understanding of the minstrel stereotypes, and her experiences of the drastic restrictions during Jim Crow segregation provide a different depth into our understanding.53 As a performer who brings a role to life and, alternatively, as a member of the audience watching the opera, Price reveals a world of embodied black experience onstage. To the multiple lenses looking into the character of Bess from the analysis of her role in the plot and the direction as she is staged in different productions, the vantage point Leontyne Price explains is one of an audience member who got to jump into the character.54

  In the nexus of nation, race, and womanhood, the opera and recent musical versions of Porgy and Bess speak to us in different yet related ways. The vulnerability and desperation of Bess is both strong drama and a painful story to watch. The artistry of the music and the story are going to affect us in the audience, no matter who we are or how we see the outcome. Leontyne Price’s reflections in Standifer’s 1997 documentary were made long after she left Mississippi, sang Bess, and retired from one of the greatest opera careers on record. Her enthusiasm and energy in thinking about how Bess was a part of her go beyond her excitement from the memory of singing an early role and penetrate into a deeper reflection of how Bess can still reflect some of the many sides of Price’s experiences. The hope and defeat embedded in the character of Bess is something that transcends the space of the opera, and its dramatic impact reaches out to those onstage and in the audience. The opportunity for a connection between the performers and the audience makes this work so powerful. It was a fitting commentary for its time in Jim Crow America, and it maintains relevance still, nearly a century later, as we move through and past the new millennium.

  5Carmen

  From Nineteenth-Century France to Settings in the United States and South Africa in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

  Arguably the sexiest woman in all of opera, the title character of Georges Bizet’s Carmen has garnered much attention for well over a century. This is no surprise, for the opera score is filled with seductive melodies and syncopated rhythms, colorful orchestration, and bold lyrics. From her opening manifesto on love in her famous “Habanera” through her final fatal duet with Don José, Carmen audaciously lives life on her own terms. Inspired by the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, Bizet’s opera reshapes the narrative and fleshes out a unique individuality for Carmen.

  The title character, Carmen, has been referred to as a gypsy since its inception. In this chapter, I use the term “gypsy” sparingly and with caution because increasingly this word has become associated with negative stereotypes. Rather than simply a descriptive term for an understood group of people, this word currently is considered by many to be a racial/ethnic slur. The Romany people have been defined by Central and Western Europe as exotic outsiders who—primarily—came from Eastern Europe, India, and Egypt.1 The historical origins and accurate migration histories of these people have not been chief factors in their representation. Instead, Western art forms have relied on tropes of thieving, untrustworthy, violent, and licentious people; the “gypsies” of Mérimée and Bizet’s Carmen stories squarely fit into this category. My aim in this paragraph is to take responsibility for what I am presenting. Many of these stories about Carmen (in the nineteenth century and in later adaptations) pick uncomfortably at wounds around name calling, fears of the foreigner, and internalized racist ideologies. In the analysis and critique of these troubled histories, I wish to acknowledge the pain they can cause and their potency.

  My main emphasis in this chapter is to examine how the Carmen story continues to have meaning along the themes of race and ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic levels, sexual desire, and changing definitions of nation. I focus on several versions of the Carmen story, starting with the first two sources in nineteenth-century Paris (the Mérimée novella and the opera by Bizet), through two African American settings in the United States (Carmen Jones in 1954 and Carmen: A Hip Hopera in 2001), to an all-black setting in South Africa (U-Carmen eKhayelitsha in 2005). To accomplish this reading, I begin with themes I find critical to the understanding of the Carmen story in its first nineteenth-century versions—the novella by Propser Mérimée (1845–46) and the opera by Georges Bizet (1875). This reading provides a background to the opera that reinforces ideas in the narrative that are particularly relevant to my discussion of the work (and this section will be a helpful reminder, or introduction, for those who are not as familiar with these various versions of Carmen).

  Carmen Jones, Carmen: A Hip Hopera, and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha are available on film and DVD, and are accessible to contemporary audiences. Chronologically, the first work is Carmen Jones, which originated as a stage musical written by Oscar Hammerstein II and was first performed in 1943. The version I am going to focus on is the 1954 film adaptation, Carmen Jones, directed by Otto Preminger, starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. The second film, Carmen: A Hip Hopera (2001), was produced by MTV, directed by Robert Townsend, and starred Beyoncé Knowles (as she was still known then before she dropped “Knowles”) and Mekhi Phifer. The final film is the 2005 South African U-Carmen eKhayelitsa, directed by Mark Dornford-May, adapted by Pauline Malefane (and others), with Malefane in the title role. There are two sub-Saharan African settings of the Carmen story in the early twenty-first century: U-Carmen eKhayelitsha from South Africa (2005) and Karmen Geï from Senegal (2001); given my focus here on the United States and South Africa, my discussion of Karen Geï from Senegal is published elsewhere.2

  Table 5.1. Carmen Overview: Carmen the novella

  Bizet’s Carmen Carmen Jones Carmen: A Hip Hopera U-Carmen

  Date 1984 1954 2001 2005

  Film Director Francesco Rosi Otto Preminger Robert Townsend Mark Dornford-May eKhayelitsha

  Setting Spain, Seville rural Florida and

  Chicago Philadelphia and LA South African

  townshi
p

  Names Carmen Carmen Jones Carmen Brown Carmen

  Micaëla Cindy Lou Caela Nomakhaya

  Don José Joe Derek Hill Jongikhaya

  Escamillo

  [bull fighter] Husky Miller

  [boxer] Blaze

  [rapper] Lulamile Nkomo

  [opera singer]

  Other Zuniga Frankie Lieutenant Miller Captain Gantana

  important Freschita—expanded Zuniga—expanded

  characters [Pearl Bailey] [Yasiin Bey “Mos Def”]

  Language French English (with dialect) English (hip hop) Xhosa

  Prosper Mérimée, Carmen.

  Sections 1–3 appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes on October 1, 1845. Section 4 was published later in 1846.

  Shaping Carmen: Bizet and Mérimée

  An unfortunate irony of Bizet’s Carmen is that Bizet never lived to see his opera become what it has been for quite a while now: one of the most popular operas of all time. Yet after its premiere, the opera was hardly considered a spectacular success. In retrospect, it is easy to see the primary trouble was that the commissioning theater was not the best fit for the subject matter. Carmen was the second opera the co-directors of the Opéra-Comique, Camille du Locle and Adolphe de Leuven, invited Bizet to compose. Though the first opera, Djamileh (1872) was not a solid success, they went ahead with a second commission. Since Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen was not unknown, from the beginning there was concern that the subject matter would be too grisly for the conservative, family-oriented audience of the Opéra-Comique.

  Assured by experienced librettists Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac, and the strong support of Célestine Galli-Marié, the first interpreter of Carmen, du Locle and de Leuven went ahead with the plans. But with the underclass cigarette factory workers, the sexuality of the title character, and her brutal death onstage, Bizet’s Carmen ended up being too shocking for the Opéra-Comique audience. Despite the opening rocky reception, the initial run included forty-eight performances, with the premiere on March 3, 1875. Tragically, exactly three months later on the night of its thirty-third performance (June 3, 1875) Bizet died after complications of a high fever and heart attack. Just a few months later in October 1875, Carmen finally gained critical success in a Viennese production where the spoken dialogue (a requirement of the Opéra-Comique) was replaced with sung recitative composed by Bizet’s colleague and friend, Ernest Guiraud.

  Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, published in four installments from 1845 to 1846 in La Revue des deux mondes (Review of the Two Worlds), carried the subtitle Journal des voyages; the periodical had a focus on travel, which Mérimée’s novella fit well. Told from the vantage point of a French narrator conducting research in Spain, the story of the bandit Don José and the subversive Carmen seems almost accidentally to become the main focus of the story as the exotic Romany and life of thievery overtake the initial plot. The local color of Spanish “gypsies” and bandits entices the narrator away from his original research and centers his attention on the foreign attractions in Spain. As was common with travel writing in the nineteenth century, the depiction of Spain is less about being historically accurate (though Mérimée had traveled to Spain, he never claimed that his novella was true) and more about the view of Spain by a bourgeoisie Frenchman who knew the tastes of his readers. Mérimée’s novella reveals an outsider’s fascination with an exotic transgressive “Other.”

  Challenging the Conventions: Gendered Relationships in Carmen

  Bizet’s opera delineates the different worlds that men and women inhabit. Central to this mission is the addition of the characters of Micaëla and Escamillo (neither is in Mérimée’s novella) who help articulate the norms for gender relations. Escamillo is a composite character of the men Carmen has seduced, and he provides a compelling rival to Don José for Carmen by the end of the opera. As a Toreador with a booming bass voice, Escamillo easily captivates the audience with his brash virility in the bullring described in his famous rousing entrance number, “The Toreador Song.” He is a logical choice for Carmen; as is seen in their short duet in the final act, their music is well matched as they effortlessly sing of their love for each other.

  Micaëla provides an important model of femininity that reflects the expectations of the Opéra-Comique’s audience and conventions of late nineteenth-century womanhood. Whereas Carmen is brazen and acts according to her own code of ethics and desires, Micaëla shows us the woman with whom Don José should fall in love. A sincere girl from his village, approved of by his mother, Micaëla is demure and shy. She gets nervous with the attentions from the military officers when she first looks for Don José in the beginning of the opera. Later in the act, when she is finally reunited with her beloved, she is hardly able to voice her true feelings without filtering them through her role as a messenger from his mother. Yet Micaëla is not a weak character, for she ventures into the mountains to find Don José in the third act, after he has left her and the military to follow Carmen and her band of smugglers. Micaëla shows courage as she tells José that his dying mother wishes to see him. More than any other character, Micaëla demonstrates a noble honor in the face of adversity.

  Rather than the notorious bandit in Mérimée’s novella, in the beginning of the opera Don José is perfectly poised to marry Micaëla and live an honorable life. Bizet’s Don José has been softened from being a dangerous outlaw in his own right to being a military corporal trying to abide by the rules and advance. One of the key conflicts in the opera is the progression of Don José from a respectable character to an obsessed, half-crazed stalker who loses control.

  In Bizet’s opera, we see how the traditional codes of masculinity go askew after Don José encounters Carmen. Hardly even noticing her during her “Habanera,” as soon as Carmen sets her sights on Don José, he becomes increasingly unable to resist her demands and charms. Even after he dramatically declares his love to her in his earnest and lyrical second act “Flower Song,” Carmen immediately challenges him to prove this love by running off to the mountains with her to live the life of a bandit. Though he initially declines, the circumstances that arise by the end of the act compel him to follow her lead and give up the life he had intended to follow in the military. In the fourth act, after things have gone awry and Carmen has moved on to Escamillo, Don José implores Carmen to remember the good times they had together and begs her not to leave him. As she harshly tells him to leave her alone, the traditional gender dynamics in the relationship are reversed. Though Carmen tries to end the relationship, a nearly hysterical Don José uses every argument he can think of to make her stay: he wants to start a fresh life together with her, he wants to save her and save himself, he still loves her. When she refutes him at each point and says she no longer loves him, his desperation comes through most poignantly when he agrees to remain a bandit and do whatever she wants; he repeatedly pleads with her, “Do not leave me” (Mais ne me quitte pas).

  With the crowds in the background cheering on Escamillo, Don José takes action and does the only thing he sees possible. Rather than let Carmen go, he turns her into the victim and brutally stabs her. With the ultimate metaphor of rape and domination, Don José seals his own doom. He has become the worst exaggeration of what he feared most in Carmen in her code to stay true to herself. Unlike Carmen’s independence, wherein she allows everyone—and, most important, herself—to make up one’s own mind despite pressure to heed convention, Don José has lost control of his actions and his inner sense of justice. Proceeding without a moral compass, he snuffs out the one thing he thinks he loves and effectively kills his own desire to move forward. His final words, which conclude the opera, show his capitulation to the authority he had just disregarded and his consequent admission of guilt: “Vous pouvez m’arreter / c’est moi qui l’ai tuée” (You may arrest me / I was the one who killed her). One interpretation could see Don José as an upright man who Carmen brings down though her seductive power. Another interpretation reveals the character of Don José as
being unsure of its destiny and unable to choose what is right in the final round when all of the cards are laid down.

  Carmen’s Voice: L’amour et la mort (Love and Death)

  From her first entrance, Carmen reveals her views about love in the chorus of her famous “Habanera.” Delivered over a repeated undulating bass line that intertwines with her curvaceous vocal melody, her message snakes its way through her enticing music.

  Si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime;

  Si je t’aime; prends garde à toi!

  If you don’t love me, I love you;

  if I love you, look out for yourself!

  Though not the most “healthy” code of behavior for a romantic relationship by any standard, Carmen is honest about her intentions and stays true to them throughout the opera. To look at Carmen as a love story promises disappointment, but to think about the opera as a story that explores many aspects of love filtered through gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic conditions, and definitions of nation provides more instruction.

  In the first half of the opera Carmen’s voice has a distinctive resonance. For noted musicologist Susan McClary, Carmen is the only character whose primary discourse in the beginning of the opera is through diegetic songs (music heard as songs by other characters onstage). In other words, Carmen presents herself in song rather than a regular voice that matches the other characters. Hence, her “voice” is perceived in a special way onstage as well as by those of us in the audience. Her use of song is strategic because she sings things she cannot or chooses not to say. In the “Habanera” she is able to present herself as a so-called “gypsy” performer. In this role, she is expected to exist on the margins of society and be able to spontaneously break into song. In this marginal identity she also is able to reveal herself as a potential lover to the full village in a way that would be too licentious in a spoken context.