New Musical in Manhattan
Carmen Jones (music by Georges Bizet; book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; produced by Billy Rose) turns the opera that Sir Thomas Beecham once called "the sturdiest oak in the operatic forest" into the most brilliant show on Broadway. If Bizet's Carmen and the all-Negro Carmen Jones live, artistically, on different sides of the railroad tracks, they nevertheless represent the shortest distance between one exciting kind of job and another. Drastic changes have been made. Carmen has been retired in a kiln, not warmed over in an oven. There is no capricious tinkering for tinkering's sake. Respectfulness everywhere chaperones audacity.
Bizet's pulsing score remains intact--unswung, unsyncopated, unsentimentalized. (The recitatif has been ripped out, but Bizet did not write it: Carmen was originally a musical drama, not grand opera). Carmen's vivid plot remains unchanged. So does the inner nature of its people. But the scene of Carmen Jones is a U.S. Southern town where hip-swaying, head-tossing Carmen Jones works in a parachute factory. The Don Jose who wins her, loves her, loses her and kills her is a harassed M.P. corporal named Joe. The Micaela who loves and loses him is country-bred Cindy Lou. The triumphant bullfighter Escamillo, who steals Carmen from her soldier, is a towering prize fighter, Husky Miller.
No hint of Spain, no highfalutin of opera, clings to these people. Oscar Hammerstein's lively book uses straight Negro idiom, finds room--and here Carmen Jones strikes out boldly for itself--for a pulsating Negro gaiety. Not into Lillas Pastia's dim tavern, but into a packed and glittering night spot, does Husky Miller make his first royal entrance. Instead of hiding out in a smugglers' den, the Carmen Jones crowd cavort and click their heels at a swanky Negro country club.
Hammerstein's lyrics are as right and renovating as his book. The seductive Seguidilla becomes Dere's a Cafe on de Corner; the Quintet turns into Whizzin' Away Along de Track. Carmen gets a load of Joe, and her famed flirtatious Habanera becomes Dat's Love:
One man gives me his diamon' stud
An I won' give him a cigarette.
One man treat me like I was mud -
An what I got dat man c'n get.
The new words for the Toreador Song make the only bull--they are no match for old associations. You can only smile when, instead of Toreador, Toreador, you hear:
Stan' up and fight until you hear de bell,
Stan' toe to toe,
Trade blow fer blow!
Keep punchin' till you make yer punches tell,
Show 'dat crowd whatcher know!
As a production, Carmen Jones is drenched with light and smeared with color, yet lean and swift-moving. Its choreography (arranged by Eugene Loring) sometimes falters, but at its best--in the hot dancing at the night spot--it is sensational. Its singing, lightweight by operatic standards, is attractive for Broadway. (To preserve voices and play the roles on alternate nights, there are two Carmens, two Joes, two Cindy Lous.) The acting is remarkably ingratiating for performers who were dug up from nowhere and tossed upon a stage. One of the Carmens (Muriel Smith) used to clean film in Philadelphia, while the six-foot-five Husky Miller twirled a nightstick in Manhattan.
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