Yet, there have been no major New York revivals of that long ago, big Broadway production of Carmen Jones. In fact, musicals with all African-American casts have enjoyed great success. It was also made into movie starring Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge, but the singing was dubbed since the cast featured actors rather than singers.Ĭarmen, the opera, is still regularly produced and casting plays and musicals with African-American actors is today welcome rather than risky. Carmen Jones, enjoyed a for then very successful run of 500 performances. Army Sergeant Joe and Escamillo the bull fighter morphed into prize fighter Husky Miller.ĭespite Hammerstein's reputation, a show with an all-black cast and a score that despite being more accessible than most operas could not hide its operatic roots, was risky in 1943. Carmen's village lover Don Jose became U.S. He moved the seductive Spanish gypsy and everyone in the opera's Seville village to a Dixieland parachute factory during World War II. Oscar Hammerstein II, also found Bizet's music irresistible - and accessible enough to adapt the steamy libretto of love, jealousy and murderįor the musical theater. After all, who could resist ear-pleasing arias like the rousing "Toreador Song" and "Habanera"? Though French composer Georges Bizet's opera adapted from Prosper Merimée's novella,wasn't well received when it premiered in 1875, it did became one of the opera world's enduring hits.
Anika Noni Rose, and Clifton Duncan (Photo: Joan Marcus)
0 kommentar(er)
