Week 10
Exoticism and Gender in Opera and Operetta


Exoticism and Gender
•The exotic “Other”=often associated with the feminine or effeminate or effeminizing or queer
•Western “Self”: associated with heteronormative, patriarchal masculinity
•Handel’s Giulio Cesare (Cleopatra and Tolomeo)
•Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalilah
•Borodin’s Prince Igor (Konchakovna)
•Britten’s Death in Venice (Aschenbach’s desire for Tadzio)
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Bizet’s Carmen
•Carmen=Spanish “Gypsy” Woman
•“Gypsies”=internal “Other”
•How is Carmen exotic?
•Habanera (#9): a “Gypsy” song?
•Melody: from a collection of Spanish art songs; rhythm: Afro-Cuban
•Seguidilla (#16): Spanish triple-meter dance + exotic elements: instrumentation, Phrygian twists
•Dance Song (#26)
•Only introspective song: B section of the ”Card” Trio (#34, 3:00)

The Spanish (“Us”) Characters in Carmen
•Micaëla’s aria (#36, 1:00)
•Don José vs. Carmen Motives in the scene following the Habanera (#10)
•Don José: duet with Micaëla (#12)
•The Murder of Carmen: #42 (4:00)

Carmen Reception in Prague
•German Theater (Estates Theater, later Neues deutsches Theater): 1880
•Czech Theater (National Theater): 1884—first foreign opera to be produced at the NT
•German reception: Carmen=progressive, Wagnerian, proto-veristic opera=basically a German opera,
the Germans understand it better than the French
•Czech reception: too cosmopolitan, regressive, commercial, immoral, sexual