I wrote this entry a couple of months back & didn't post it. I was afraid of attracting a feminist troll...& I might still. Those gals tend to have no sense of humor. JJ & I are in France now where the French have groused for the entire month of mai. The sun never came out, it rained everywhere--even the midi. It was so chilly they couldn't even throw off their scruffy neck scarfs, or leave their umbrellas at home. When I get a chance I'll be telling a funny story or two.
So...as I mentioned, we listen to the matinee of the New York Metropolitan Opera on Saturdays, including the interviews and games at intermission. Recently a young diva was being interviewed she was asked to compare two characters, Gilda & Carmen. She said that Gilda was an old-fashioned girl and that Carmen was a modern woman. Honestly I found this appraisal quite shocking. That Gilda is old-fashioned is cliché, but is Carmen really a modern woman?
I see these two characters from an historic perspective: Gilda is the modern woman and Carmen is the fossil. Before recorded history, we know that humans roamed the earth for eons relatively free of a moral code. I imagine those days when might made right & females were brutalized chattel. With the advent of civilizations came moral codes that protected women and children. Women were expected to adhere to the rules for their own good and the good of society. A woman who lived freely & thumbed her nose at common decency was seen as low, merely reverting to her animal instincts. The good woman was enlightened and rewarded; the bad woman had not evolved properly & she would suffer the consequences.
I want to understand how Carmen is modern woman. If she is, then Bizet’s tragedy is no tragedy, at all, but a mere a tale of two hapless lovers. His gypsy woman sings her first aria (the famed Habanera in minor mode) warning her would-be lovers that she is free as a bird and she follows no rules. I find that rather fair-play of Carmen. She then proceeds to beguile Don Jose, a military officer. She will drop him without pity when she moves on to her next conquest, Don Escamillo, a toreador. Carmen is definitely the initiator & closer of her affairs. Since she can do as she likes, Don Jose, surely a modern man, should accept that she’s through with him & move on in a gentlemanly fashion. For modern times, this should be the tale of an uncontested modern woman, but surely not a tragedy. There’s no need for Carmen to die because she is within her rights. Only Don Jose should die for his murderous jealousy. (Of course, they both die.)
In my mind the definition of tragedy is when flawed characters die at the end. Gilda is “good” in the old-fashioned sense, but she allows a moral weakness to trump the social code. But, Carmen as the modern woman is not flawed. As the new norm she perfectly within her rights. If Gilda is no longer the standard, and Carmen is, then what of civilization? If Carmen’s freedom & sexual equality are now taken for granted all she must do is protect herself and carry on.
The worm has indeed turned: Meet Carmen, the modern woman and Gilda, the relic.
As Scott Walker might say, “Ms. Darcy meet the new world.”
