Carmen

Before saying anything about the performance itself, I would just like to comment that I very much enjoyed the evening (and the one of the Ballet) especially because it was so fun to spend time together out of the classroom and all dressed up. So thank you to everyone for that!

Before I saw Carmen, I thought all operas were like this: huge stage, spotlight on the center, a woman in a puffy, old-fashioned gown stands there, arms flared dramatically, singing for three hours straight.  While I like music and singing, that didn’t sound like my idea of a good time.  Thankfully Carmen was not like that.  Now, in my mind, the Opera is the classier mother of Broadway shows.  First-off, I loved the scenery.  Even though we were very high and far away, the detail was evident.  The circular shape helped unify the scenes and focus your eyes on the center of what was going on.  Maybe it also helped the acoustics, which were incredible.  The music was beautiful.  It was dramatic, quiet, creepy, sad, happy, exciting, and deep.  It really filled the whole space and it was cool that we could see the orchestra.  While I am sure the people closer to the stage heard the voices louder, the fact that we heard the singing so clearly without the aide of microphones is amazing.  I never appreciated the power of the human voice so much before.

The storyline of Carmen was not extremely difficult to follow as I was scared it would be since the amount of important characters was limited and the dialogue was not very fast (seeing as they repeated every word about ten times).  I found that I was mostly bored during the first two acts because they were very drawn out and didn’t really have much action.  I liked the third and fourth much better because they were more fast-paced and showed more character development.  I went from absolutely hating Carmen in the first three acts (which led to a very comedic commentary throughout, thank you Jeanette for putting up with me), to understanding her in the last act. By the middle of the fourth act, I was sitting at the edge of my seat, not just because I couldn’t see otherwise because of my height, but also for excitement.  I think Carmen redeemed herself in dying for her freedom and I liked that in the end, I could finally feel some positive emotions towards the main character.

** About Opera vs. Carmen specifically. Are all operas like Carmen? Do they all portray women in such a way? And men? Are they all so overly dramatic? Are they all so long?