The fictional character of Carmen the heroine of Bizets opera attracts a range of

labels which variously position her as seductress, femme fatale, sex addict, fate/
death obsessed, victim, liberated woman and even feminist.
These descriptors have been circulating since the operas premiere in Paris in 1875.
From its initial underwhelming success, Bizets Carmen has become one of the
worlds most popular and frequently performed operas. Opera Australias production
of Carmen, based on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Norwegian
National Opera co-production, opens in Melbourne tomorrow night.
Carmen is often simply understood as a story about a doomed love affair. But there
is a little more to it than that

A battle of the sexes

The story of Carmen has two central characters. Don Jos, a soldier from the
country, and Carmen, an exotic gypsy woman working in a cigarette factory. Carmen
has been causing trouble in the factory and, to avoid being imprisoned she seduces
Don Jos, who has been ordered to arrest her, and escapes. He falls in love with
her. She leads him astray.

Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones; 1954. Jack Samuels

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She is responsible for the break-up between Don Jos and his fiance, Micala, the
antithesis of Carmen, and prompts him to leave the army to join her and her band of
smugglers. But Carmen becomes bored with Don Jos and finds the bullfighter
Escamillo to take his place. Don Jos then murders Carmen in a fit of jealousy.
The opera is based on the novella Carmen (1845) by Prosper Mrime and the
subject matter in the original story, which is necessarily simplified for the opera,
represents a number of fantasies involving race, class and gender that were
circulating in 19th-century French culture.
In the opening chapter to American musicologist Susan McClarys book, Georges
Bizet: Carmen, language professor Peter Robinson makes the point that the real
battle in Carmen is between the sexes. From the very beginning the woman is
marked as the enemy. The battlefield is Carmens body and the story raises
questions about who shall own her body while describing those who are fighting over
it.
Robinson suggests there are two exotic anecdotes threaded into the story. The first
deals with the notion of the uncivilised. Accordingly, Carmen, the gypsy girl, and
the nomad smugglers are portrayed as violent, disorderly, superstitious and
diabolical.
The second anecdote is concerned with order, rationality and logic. These
characteristics are represented by Don Jos. He epitomises the hallmarks of French
civilisation. These elements, which compose the structure of the story, are linked to
control and mastery.

Adrian Tamburini as Zuniga, Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Carmen & Dmytro Popov as Don Jos.Opera Australia, photo: Branco Gaica

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Throughout the story, Carmen is associated with the colour red. Red is the life-force
itself. But when it spills outside the body, it is the colour of death.
In Opera; or the Undoing of Women, French feminist writer Catherine Clment
similarly attributes Carmens death to the oppression of women by men. Carmen
must die because she refuses to acquiesce to the desires of Don Jos.
Carmen is sometimes seen as the female equivalent of the Don Giovanni character
in Mozarts opera of the same name. In his book, A Song of Love and Death,
Australian literary scholar Peter Conrad says that both characters are impelled to
remain eternally in motion, pursuing, in Don Giovannis case, and manoeuvring free,
in Carmens. They can only be truly satiated in death. Carmen seeks to keep all men

in the world from knowing her. She is portrayed as mysterious, unpredictable,

perpetually contradictory and elusive.

Its all in the music

The vitality of Carmen is evoked by clever musical techniques. Carmens music is
sexy and exotic and is, as McClary writes:
grounded in pseudo gypsy dance forms that are referred to by their dance type
designations: Habaera (a Cuban genre from Havana) and Seguidilla (a dance from
Southern Spain, possibly of Moorish origin).
McClarys analysis, paraphrased here, shows how music is able to powerfully
conjure the essence of the characters. It also intensifies the themes of the sexual,
racial, and exotic in the opera.
Carmens rhythms set her body in perpetual motion. They are contagious and
seductive, drawing attention to her body and arousing desire. Before she begins to
sing the first note of her famous Habaera, the instrumental pattern di-da-da-daa,
di-da-da-daa is already engaging her body, setting her hips in motion.
Carmens Habanera.

Her melody, which begins after the short instrumental introduction, sounds as if it is
slipping in-between the cracks of the notes. It is excessively chromatic a
chromatic scale ascends and descends through all the 12 semitones of the octave
and is less stable than a major or minor scale which is based on 8 notes of the
octave and slippery, descending seductively by half steps. It taunts and teases. It
draws attention to the erogenous zones. But the music also alternately coaxes and
frustrates. It lingers on notes that have a strong gravitational urge to move onward.
In Feminine Endings, McClary writes that Carmen:
plays with our expectations not only by lingering but also by reciting in irregular
triplets that strain against the beat.

This helps to create the allure of her exotic, sexy character and to portray her as
proficient in the art of seduction. Carmens music refuses to be contained. It is used
to mercilessly manipulate Don Jos, who is obsessed with her.
By giving Carmen unpredictable, disordered music, she is portrayed as the opposite
of Don Jos. According to McClary, Don Joss story organises the narrative and his
fate hangs in the balance between the Good Woman (his fiance) and the Bad
Woman (Carmen). His music is no less invested in the libido than Carmens but it is
marked to contrast. Don Joss music is devoted to loftier sentiments rather than to
the body. It is made to behave in accordance with the universal tongue of Western
art music.
Accordingly, Don Joss famous Flower Song constructs images of fevered longing
and dread, as he imagines Carmen as demon and then as object of desire. He sings
of submitting himself masochistically to her power. There is a lyrical urgency in the
song but the music behaves as if it is constrained.
Don Joss Flower Song.

Gradually, the opera leads to inevitable closure brought about by the violent murder
of Carmen. The chromatic slippage of Carmens music, which McClary says is
carefully defined throughout the opera as feminine, is purged once and for all.
McClary notes that unlike earlier scenes, in which Bizet has freely indulged in
Carmens sexy music, the final scene is informed by the necessity for tonal closure.
As Jos pleads with Carmen to give in, the bass line presents a slippery chromatic
floor. The chromaticism must be excised. At the same moment that the crowd inside
the bullring cheers in response to Escamillos victory over the bull, we (the music
lovers) witness and celebrate the victory over an even more treacherous beast.
Chromatic slippage (representing disorder and chaos) is expunged, making way for
the major triad (representing order and uniformity) which prevails.
McClary says that for all the formal neatness of this conclusion, we leave the
theatre humming her infectious tunes. The femme fatale character lives on through

her music. In death, she has the ultimate control over her destiny. And thus Carmen
is forever immortalised as one of the great heroines.
http://theconversation.com/bizets-femme-fatale-carmen-and-the-music-ofseduction-26304