Carmen

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What most excited you when the
opportunity to direct Carmen was
presented to you?
I know the music so well (it was one of
the first operas I ever listened to). For
some reason, it’s become a part of the
soundtrack of many people’s lives. I
love the element of dance in it as well,
and how important that is in the piece.
Carmen dances as a seduction and as a
release. It’s rare in opera that dance is
central to a leading character. Having
started out as a choreographer, I'm
excited by that.
Can we talk about the updating
of the opera?
We moved it to 1936-37, during the
Spanish Civil War. One of my first
fascinations when approached about
Carmen was the bullfighting element in
it. The most symbolic bull I could recall
was in Picasso’s “Guernica," created as
a reaction to the German bombing of
a small town during the war. There’s a
wonderful image in the upper left-hand
corner of a figure holding a dead child
or young woman in his arms, in total
grief and despair, and overlooking all
of that is this bull, just staring down
at it. It reminded me of the end of the
opera, with Carmen in the arms of
Don José, with him in such pain and so
tortured, and the idea of this bull and the
victorious Escamillo lurking above that
whole scene. I couldn’t get that image
from “Guernica” out of my mind.
I went to Madrid to see the painting,
and it became a jumping-off point for
the production. There was also the idea
of making the smugglers revolutionaries
in Act Three, with a cause they were
fighting for. That war was often described
as Fascism vs. Democracy – so it seemed
a good parallel for the opera.
34 | February 11 - March 25, 2017
A Talk with the Director
Rob Ashford, director and choreographer of this season’s Carmen,
spoke with Lyric’s dramaturg, Roger Pines.
L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
MUSEO REINA SOFIA (MADRID)
Picasso's “Guernica” (1937), an important influence
on director-choreographer Rob Ashford’s response to Carmen.
At Lyric we have two different Carmens
bringing their own strengths to the role,
but what kind of characterization are
you most interested in seeing them
create onstage?
I’m hoping both ladies will see her
psychological and emotional journey
from the inside. She’s powerless within
society, yet completely empowered by
men’s reactions to her. She works in a
cigarette factory, so she’s quite low in
social standing. It's an interesting dance
she does between devotion and freedom,
between the possibility of true love and
striving for status – this is all fascinating
to present onstage.
What’s most intriguing to you about the
Don José/Carmen relationship?
I think it’s intriguing because he's a
“good boy” who does what his mother
and society want him to do. Even his
profession as a soldier is to protect and do
good, but he's fighting something inside
himself. There is a transference of his lust
for Carmen to his love for Carmen. He
leaves Micaëla, the good girl, and goes
for the baddest girl possible, and does it
with the same conviction that he courted
Micaëla! We have to examine exactly how
that conflict inside him drives him to do
what he does.
You're both director and choreographer.
This opera gives you crucial dance
sequences that open Act Two and Act
Four. What style of movement should
the audience expect?
There is a lot of partnering in this show,
and that’s intentional, because of the
intense relationship between Don José
and Carmen. They seem to dance around
each other through the entire opera, and
I thought we should mirror that in the
couples dancing onstage.
In Houston you used the recitatives, but
Lyric’s production will use the spoken
dialogue. How was the decision made to
go in that direction?
Anthony Freud felt strongly about using
the spoken dialogue, and [Houston
Grand Opera artistic director] Patrick
Summers felt equally as strongly about
the recitatives. I see the advantages to
both. How great that we get to try it a
different way, to see what that does to the
story – that’s exciting to me.