University of Virginia Library

Artists Series Presents
Bizet's 'Carmen' Tonight

Produced and translated into
English by the Goldovsky Opera
Theater, Bizet's "Carmen" will be
presented as the third production
of the Artists Series tonight at 8
p.m. in University Hall.

Thomas O'Leary and Nancy
Williams will play the lead roles of
Don Jose, corporal of the guard,
and Carmen, the gypsy beauty, in
this story of romantic adventures
and bitter struggles.

The opera is set in nineteenth
century Spain and concerns a
soldier, Don Jose, who deserves his
post for the love of a much admired
gypsy beauty, Carmen. Eventually,
Carmen tires of Don Jose and
throws him off for a new lover, a
bullfighter named Escamillo.

Like all Goldovsky Opera
Theater productions "Carmen" has
been translated into contemporary
idiomatic English, and it is the
conviction of Boris Goldovsky that
when an audience understands
everything that an operatic cast is
singing, the public becomes far
more critical of the action, stage
business, and character portrayals,
and the performers may no longer
relax their dramatic standards
behind a screen of language
incomprehensibility.

Mr. Goldovsky contends, "The
resistance of American audiences
thus far to opera performed in the
vernacular has been due in a large
part to the low dramatic standards
that have prevailed in the
occasional Opera-in-English given
by other United States companies
to date.

"Where the audiences did not
notice the inadequacies of the same
company's productions done in
foreign languages, they were quick
to conclude from the dramatically
ludicrous performances in English
that opera in a tongue that they
could understand was inept and
hopeless."

The New York Times has been
quoted as saying that
"Opera-in-English is a must for the
Goldovsky production, and that
anyone who attends it will have no
difficulty in following its passionate
and colorful characters through
their trails and tribulations."

Carmen Confronts Don Jose In Spanish-Set Opera

Artists Series Offering Plays In University Hall Tonight