Bizet's Carmen is probably the best known opera of the standard repertoire, yet its very familiarity often prevents us from approaching it with the seriousness it deserves. This handbook explores the opera in a number of contexts, bringing to the surface the controversies over gender, race, class and musical propriety that greeted its premiere and that have been rekindled by the recent spate of film versions. Beginning with a study of the Mérimée story by Peter Robinson and an examination of the social tensions in nineteenth-century France that inform both that story and the opera, the book traces the latter through its genesis and reception. The central core of the book presents a close reading of the opera that offers new interpretive possibilities. The handbook concludes with discussions of four films based on the opera: Carmen Jones and the versions of Carmen by Carlos Saura, Peter Brook, and Francesco Rosi. The volume contains a bibliography, music examples, and a synopsis.

A word-by-word translation in English and IPA, and annotated guides to the dialogue and recitative versions of the opera, this book is a complete reference for anyone studying or producing Bizet's Carmen. It provides all the material necessary for practical use by singers, conductors, coaches, stage directors, opera producers, students and teachers. - from the publisher's notes.

"The heroine of the most performed opera in the world since 1875, Carmen has become a universal cultural icon. She has appeared in a multitude of ballets, on stage as well as ice rinks, and in some eighty international films. The success of Bizet' opera owns a lot to the libretto's singular accounting of the 1845 short story on which it is based. In her close textual analyses of Ludovic Halévy's and Henri Meilhac's libretto and Prosper Mérimée's novella, the author strives to account for the multiple aspects of Carmen's attraction that support George Bizet's acclaimed musical score. Through its multi-facetted cultural renditions through time and place, the story of Carmen can be said to have attained the status of a myth. Myths are stories that speak to us, in our own time and place, about personal, social, or cultural issues"--

Contains the complete text of the libretto with annotations in both English and Italian and a critical historical commentary. The text also includes the background of the composer, biographies of the principal singers and conductor. The two accompanying CDs contain the complete opera sung in Italian.

"In recent years, new fields of inquiry in music have blossomed, some more controversial and inflammatory than others, some overtly veering from the traditional affairs of the Academy. Among the variety of questions raised are those that explore the differences between "who we are," "what we do," and "how/what we experience." Such inquiry reflects our desire to discover the ways in which we identify with our music and the ways in which the music we make, listen to, and talk about identifies us. Going beyond singular investigations of history, theory, gender, race, or culture, the contributors to Audible Traces complicate matters. They examine the ways that our supposed self-identity? gender, race, sexuality, sexual orientation, and ethnicity? intersects with our activities and our experiences. Their concerns also include dance, technology, societal forces, cognitive studies, poetry, fashion, sensory inputs, and politics. In a mosaic of approaches and viewpoints composers, musicologists, performers, ethnomusicologists, theorists of music and of literature, suggest and reveal traces of the ways that these complex matrices of identity affect us during the compositional, listening, or performing experience."--Publisher's website.