First of all, let me apologize to Peter (and everyone else) for assuming that you all know what the C’s is, and had been tracking the progress of the academic conference calendar as I had . . . The C’s is the Conference on College Composition and Communication, held annually at the end of March. This year it was held in Chicago, so I took the train, which is always a delight, spent a day with my friend Barb from high school, then met up with my colleagues, co-presenters, and roommates (D. and L.) And then began the conference narrative. I actually did go to professional sessions, too, and learned quite a lot from some of them, but somehow my post-conference stories always revolve around the other stuff. (Possibly because the professional stuff is so esoteric.)

Anyhow, Carmen. First I must say that seeing Carmen with Jane was a wonderful treat. Neither of us had seen the opera, and neither of us knew the story. At each intermission we got into these wonderful, far-ranging discussions of the previous act. Both being English types, we both noticed an ambiguity in the supertitles caused by some missing bit of punctuation – and she would have solved the problem with a comma, whereas I would have used an apostrophe – and the change would have been meaningful, so we discussed the relative merits of each interpretation. How many people find this sort of thing interesting and fun?

Jane read the program notes after the first act (you recall we arrived, breathless, at the last minute), but I didn’t, and I refused to let her tell me the story. So I got to experience it all for the first time as it unfolded on stage, which was wonderful in and of itself.

Much of it was as I had anticipated; it’s the Lyric Opera, for heaven’s sake, so everyone is going to hit their notes nice and loudly, and the orchestra will be perfect. But what really stunned me were the sets and the staging. This production really revolutionized the way I understand set design (in opera, anyway). I’ve seen some wonderful sets over the years – most recently, the sets of Blithe Spirit come to mind. But the sets in Carmen were different than the sets of any straight drama or even musical that I’ve ever seen – they somehow became tableaux of the music in a weird and wonderful way. They were almost literary in their presentation of the story.

There’s just so much to say about this, I can never say it all. A few examples: The first act takes place outside in a small Spanish city (right, opera buffs?) in the late nineteenth century. On the stage, this city is represented in part by a column, next to which is a ramp (down which various people proceed, and on the sides of which people sit). The column and ramp were set diagonally on the stage, with the results that [a] you saw the column as three-dimensional, which gave the stage depth, and [b] it set up all sorts of interesting diagonal sight lines, which the director used for all kinds of foreshadowing. (Jane pointed out that they also used the stage vertically very well; it’s a huge stage and the people look quite small on it, so using the vertical space effectively was really important.) The color scheme, too, seemed to move the action along – beige, black and white in the first act, blue in the second (when the action moved out of the town), then beige, black, white, added to the reds and golds of the bullfight in acts 3 and 4, with increasing red in successive scenes . . .

It was the final bullfight that blew me away, though.

NOTE: I give away the ending here. If you like my idea of seeing Carmen with no idea about what happens, you better stop reading now.

OK. Where was I?

The bullfight. How can I do this justice? At the back of the stage were three huge arches, the area in front of which was the exterior of the bullfight stadium, and behind which (nearly at the back of the stage) was the interior. So for the parade, the bullfighters and picadors entered from the front of the stage on the left, and proceeded back through the arches, into the ring. The arches were beige and black, but hung with red crepe paper in places (looking like the dregs of a parade, only more arty). There were big squares of red and white confetti on the stage, and the crowds threw more confetti as the picadors and toreadors (dressed in red and gold sparkly costumes that caught the light every which way) entered the ring. When they had entered the ring, the crowds ran in, and the doors – big, red doors – clanged shut, closing the arches, leaving Carmen and Don Jose outside the stadium.

I don’t know how to say this, but there was something in the timing of the moment where Don Jose stabs Carmen that really made everything click for me. The crowd is cheering wildly, the music is frenetic, he stabs her along one of those diagonal sight lines I mentioned before, and somehow the starkness, the fact that the only sparkly thing in this metaphorical bull-ring is the dagger . . . I dunno. The contrast made the action outside the ring seem like parody. Then, the instant Carmen is stabbed, the bullring doors fling open, and projected along the wall behind the arches are faces of a crowd; the perspective has immediately shifted, and all of a sudden the action in front of us appears to be inside the bull ring instead of outside of it.

The set design was a story element in and of itself, what can I say?

And it was breathtakingly beautiful. The red doors, red crepe paper, red bullfighter costumes, all worked wonderfully against the beige and black and white. Often I thought that I was looking at moving paintings or something; the sets themselves were like art that moved with and reinforced the music. I have to say, it was utterly astonishing.

I’m already plotting a trip back next year, if we can manage . . . it’s certainly on my wish list, that much is sure.