Original image by There Stands the Glass.
A trigger warning about depictions of gunfire, suicide, criminality, cruelty to animals and “seductive and violent behavior” is included in the program for UMKC Conservatory’s current production of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen.” How I love opera!
While I embrace the plot elements that are part and parcel of grand opera, a personalized advisory would remind me that every time I’m exposed to “Carmen” the melodies involuntarily ricochet in my head for weeks. Bizet is all about the bops.
The talented cast of students did justice to the arias of the 151-year-old opera. I paid $25 to be transported to a Romani community in and around Seville. The other 200 people in the room on opening night vanished along with the rest of the world during the nearly three-hour production.
Much of the success of my pandemic-era opera initiative is rooted in the form’s hallucinatory effect. The slow pace and spectacular voices in the best productions- last night’s opera included- put me in an altered state in which place and time no longer exist. "La la la."