Georges Bizet, Rodion Shchedrin, Deep Forest: CARMEN

The birth of one of the most important works in history was actually preceded by a not very significant short notice in a newspaper. It wrote about a Spanish sergeant who succumbed to the seductions of a beautiful gypsy woman, but ultimately ended up as her murderer. The prominent writer Prosper Merimée learned about this story during his trip to Spain in 1830. The master, whose work had been inspired by the life of the gypsies many times, decided to write a novella based on this tragedy. This happened fifteen years later, in 1845. In 1872, another great creator, the composer Georges Bizet, received a commission for an opera for the Paris Opéra Comique. The choice fell on Merimée's passionate story of a young sergeant and an unbridled gypsy woman.

"A strong dramatic story, the color of the Spanish environment, the complexity of relationships and their development, the influence of social conventions, all of it ending in drama... I like the clashes of the present with history, controversial situations, but also certainties, constants. Shchedrin's music is a certainty for me - a good basis for dance theater. However, I somehow lacked more earthiness, passion and space for the truth of this deep theme. I searched for a long time until I came across the music of the Deep Forest group, which filled this gap in Shchedrin's original. By combining Shchedrin and Deep Forest, I "created" the ground on which I tried to present Carmen, her passion, earthiness and freedom, and also the entire rural community, as convincingly as possible. From P. Mérimée's novella, by deleting some characters, I condensed the plot into the story of four main characters - Carmen, José, Escamillo and Micaela. The catalyst for their fateful situations is the character of Death. However, the notorious plot of the story does not change in its essence."

Location: National Theatre / Historic Building