NPR World of Opera
Carmen, by Georges Bizet

Have you ever gone to a movie, or tuned in a TV show, only to feel guilty about actually enjoying it?

Maybe it was one of those shamelessly titilating "femme fatale" films, like Body Heat with Kathleen Turner or any number of Sharon Stone movies. You know, the ones where all the women except one are dimwitted floozies, and that one is a self-obsessed, murderous monster.

Or, maybe it was something that bases its appeal on what many consider a racial or ethnic stereotype. Say, a mob story like "The Sopranos," which also has the guilty appeal of being appallingly violent.

Maybe you've gotten hooked on one of those "real-life" mini-series that trades on someone's tragic death. Or worse, perhaps you've been drawn to a film out of literally morbid curiosity. That is, because someone died while making it -- like The Crow, with Brandon Lee, or Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

Well, today's opera has been hooking audiences for more than a century-and-a-half for many of those same reasons. Maybe all of those same reasons. It's title character is one of the great "femme fatales" of all time -- and she gets killed, in the end, for her trouble. The opera's early audiences were scandalized by this character's overt sexuality, and by her graphically portrayed death; but they went to see the opera, anyway. That character is also a Gypsy, and the opera portrays Gypsies in a decidedly dim light. Then, to top it off, at a point when the opera's long-term success was still up in the air, the composer suddenly died -- and the lines at the box office immediately got longer.

The opera, of course, is the one that's featured this week on NPR World of Opera, George Bizet's Carmen. Tune in to catch all the action in a production from the Grand Theatre of Geneva. Beforehand, join Lou Santacroce on NPR's At the Opera for more on this decidedly "pop" opera and it's unexpectedly serious implications.

http://opera.stanford.edu/opera/Bizet/Carmen/libretto.html (Libretto of the opera, in French) http://www.npr.org/programs/attheopera/ (NPR's AT THE OPERA)

LINKS:

Synopsis of Carmen
Grand Theatre of Geneva
Libretto, in French
NPR's At the Opera

COMING UP NEXT WEEK: An encore broadcast of The Abduction from the Seraglio by W. A. Mozart