Text by Hart Crane. Used with permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
PROGRAM NOTE:
Pablo de Sarasateʼs Carmen Fantasy is unique among Carmen fantasies in that it uses only music that Bizetʼs Carmen herself sings. This idea of the violinist-become-Carmen was as important to me as Sarasateʼs notes (which I use freely): my violinist is Carmen, my mezzo-soprano one of her many admirers.
Hart Craneʼs “Carmen de Boheme” was written when he was still a teenager, and its excesses may be attributed to his youth, but they create an over-the top atmosphere in which Carmen, now careworn and life-weary, “flaunts through the gloom” post-performance at some gaudy theater, “bright peacocks” adorning the walls.
The Sarasate and Crane are tricky, expressively: Bizetʼs “exoticism,” which Sarasate embraces, today seems ethnically stereotypical, and one struggles to take this technical showpiece seriously. As for Craneʼs Carmen: is she a great performer still to be admired, or an aging nobody who should have hung it up long ago?