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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page research paper that in which the writer argues that Bizet's Carmen deserved the designation of "realistic," and then discusses several film versions of the story. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khbizcar.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
mythical, magical Germanic past, Bizets opera was set in the present and based on a popular novella by Prosper Merimee, whose combination of "lucid romanticism and philosophical realism" inspired Bizet
(Carmen). Bizets contemporaries advised against using the story of the free-spirited gypsy who is murdered by her lover, asserting that the "seedy social milieu" of the cigar-making gypsies and thieves
was not a suitable setting for opera (Carmen). However, Bizet could not be dissuaded. Having completed Carmen, Bizet had the misfortune to present his masterpiece at the Opera-Comique, a "family
theatre" where bourgeois Parisians liked to take their wives and marriageable daughters (Machlis 160). Passion on stage was considered acceptable as long as it concerned kings and royalty long
dead. However, the passionate Gypsy and her multiple lovers were far too realistic for family fare. The rumor that the libretto was not respectable helped to give he opera
a run of thirty-seven performances over three months and the theater manager contracted with Bizet and his librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy, for their next work, but, basically Carmen
initially failed precisely because of its realism. Noted music critic Harold C. Schonberg has pointed out that Carmen was, essentially, the beginning of the "verismo" school of opera, which is
characterized by works which present contemporary characters in real-life situations (Carmen). Schonberg indicates that, with Carmen, as Modest Mussorgsky had with Boris Godunov, Bizet demand that "art had to reflect
life....not idealized life, but life as it actually was lived" (Carmen). Bizet had put every ounce of his considerable creativity and genius into Carmen, and its reception was incredibly
disappointing. Worn down from months of rehearsals, Bizet was not prepared for this blow. Three months later, Bizet died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-seven. However, within
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