Tonight was George Bizet’s Carmen on stage at Dallas' Winspear Opera House. The star of this opera is always the Bizet's music. His masterpiece of dramatic keeps Carmen in the top 10 list of the most popular operas. This is the second time we have seen it at the Winspear.
Carmen is of course the infamous gypsy at the center of Bizet’s opera. She warns the men she attracts immediately: she is not a woman to be tamed. When she sets her sights on a trusting soldier, Don José. Falling instantly in love with Carmen, José willingly follows her into a life of thieving, ignoring the attentions of Micaëla, his hometown sweetheart.
When a dashing toreador enters the equation, Carmen finds her attractions shifting to the handsome bullfighter, pushing José to the brink of desperation. I love the music but I still have flash backs of Gilligan’s Island when the Skipper as Polonius sang to Laertes (Mary Ann) in Hamlet set to the music of Carmen! You know the Toreador song, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, Do not forget: Stay out of debt; Think twice, and take this good advice from me, Guard that old solvency. There’s just one other thing you ought to do. To thine own self be true.”
For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
and her speech is smoother than oil;
but in the end she is bitter as gall,
sharp as a double-edged sword.
Proverbs 5:3-4
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