Flower Power: Don José and Dangerous Love in Bizet's Carmen

Aria Code

WQXR & The Metropolitan Opera

Music Interviews, Music Commentary, Aria, Music, Arts, Metropolitan, Performing Arts, Code, Wqxr, Opera, Wnyc, Studios

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You hear the message over and over in pop culture: love overcomes everything. But when Don José sings “The Flower Song” in Bizet's Carmen, you're reminded that love has a dark side, too.

In the Season 1 finale, host Rhiannon Giddens welcomes tenor Roberto Alagna, critic Anne Midgette and psychologist Andrew G. Marshall to consider the crazy, possessive side of love and the importance of experiencing art that doesn’t have a fairy-tale ending. Then, you’ll hear Alagna sing the role of the passionate and violent Don José onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Don Chose is an away driven mad by his love, but if he's mad it's in his obsession.
0:11.6	I think most of us have been through wild mood swings and kind of passionate irrationality.
0:19.8	From WQXR in the Metropolitan Opera, this is Arya Code.
0:23.5	I'm Rianne Ginseng.
0:25.1	We sort of go along thinking, oh this is going to be jolly, we've got gypsies and singing
0:30.4	and dancing and the tarantella and, well this is going to be a fun night out.
0:35.7	And of course it ends in bloodshed and horror.
0:38.8	Every episode we take a close look at a single Arya and then listen to it with fresh ears.
0:43.8	Today it's the flower song from Bisei's Carmen.
0:47.9	He's a very macho man and he has always loved inside the volcano you know when you have
0:54.0	all this magma inside of you.
0:56.5	It's something like this and for this reason this this Arya is magical for me.
1:15.4	Carmen may be one of the most popular operas now, but its premiere in 1875 was met with
1:21.4	shock and horror.
1:23.2	An entire opera about a gypsy woman, a sexually liberated gypsy woman?
1:28.2	She smokes, she smuggles, she sashes and seduces, she knows she's utterly irresistible and
1:34.2	flaunts it.
1:41.0	Truly scandalous.
1:44.3	Now the one thing that didn't seem to bother audiences at the time was the obsessive,
1:48.2	jealous and ultimately murderous soldier, Don Jose.
1:53.0	And when Carmen eventually leaves him for a bullfighter.
2:02.8	Don Jose goes nuts and stabs her to death.
	...

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