Carmen Abroad
Bizet's Opera on the Global Stage

From the 'old world' to the 'new' and back again, this transnational history of the performance and reception of Bizet's Carmen ? whose subject has become a modern myth and its heroine a symbol ? provides new understanding of the opera's enduring yet ever-evolving and resituated presence and popularity. This book examines three stages of cultural transfer: the opera's establishment in the repertoire; its performance, translation, adaptation and appropriation in Europe, the Americas and Australia; its cultural 'work' in Soviet Russia, in Japan in the era of Westernisation, in southern, regionalist France and in Carmen's 'homeland', Spain. As the volume reveals the ways in which Bizet's opera swiftly travelled the globe from its Parisian premiere, readers will understand how the story, the music, the staging and the singers appealed to audiences in diverse geographical, artistic and political contexts.

List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Foreword and acknowledgements; Part I. Establishment in Paris and the repertoire: 1. Carmen at home and abroad Clair Rowden and Richard Langham Smith; 2. Carmen's second chance: revival in Vienna Laura Moeckli; 3. Carmen faces Paris and the provinces Clair Rowden; 4. Carmen dusted down: Albert Carré's 1898 revival at the Opéra-Comique Michela Niccolai; 5. Refashioning Carmen at the Théâtre de La Monnaie, 1902 Bruno Forment; 6. How Carmen became a repertory opera in Italy and in Italian Matthew Franke; Part II. Across frontiers: 7. A new performance for a new world: Carmen in America Kristen M. Turner; 8. The unstoppable march of time: Carmen, and New Orleans in transition Charlotte Bentley; 9. The return of the habanera: Carmen's early reception in Latin America José Manuel Izquierdo, Jaime Cortés-Polanía and Juan Francisco Sans; 10. From Spain to Lusophone lands: Carmen in Portugal and Brazil David Cranmer; 11. Carmen in the antipodes Kerry Murphy; 12. Carmen, as seen and heard in Victorian Britain Paul Rodmell; 13. Celtic Carmens: rebellion and redemption Linda J. Buckley and Jennifer Millar; 14. Carmen for the Czechs and Germans, 1880 to 1945 Martin Nedbal; 15. Carmen in Poland prior to 1918 Renata Suchowiejko; 16. A woman or a demon: Carmen in the late nineteenth-century Nordic countries Ulla-Britta Broman-Kananen; Part III. Localising Carmen: 17. Russian Carmens and 'Carmenism': from Imperial import to ideological benchmark Michelle Assay; 18. The other reversed? Japan's assimilation of Carmen between 1885 and 1945 Naomi Matsumoto; 19. Flamenco and the 'hispanicisation' of Bizet's Carmen in the Belle Époque Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz; 20. Carmen at home: between Andalusia and the Basque Provinces (1845–1936) Lola San Martín Arbide; 21. Carmen in the midi amphitheatres: a 'tauro-comique' spectacle Sabine Teulon Lardic; Selected Bibliography.

Richard Langham Smith is a Research Professor at the Royal College of Music, London. He edited Carmen for Edition Peters and his translation of the libretto can be found in the Overture Opera Guide. With Cambridge University Press, he is the author of the Cambridge Opera Handbook for Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande and the editor of Debussy Studies. In 1995 he was made Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres for services to French culture and music.
Clair Rowden is a Reader in Musicology at Cardiff University. Her work includes collaborating with Richard Langham Smith on Carmen (Edition Peters) and the recent curation of www.carmenabroad.org to accompany this book. The co-edited collection Musical Theatre in Europe, 1830-1945 was published in 2017, and her book Opera and Parody in Paris, 1860-1900 appears in 2020. She regularly writes programme notes for Opéra-Comique, Wexford Festival Opera, Welsh National Opera, the Royal Opera House and the Salzburg Festival.