A picture-book version of CARMEN (Cuento de Luz, 36 pp., $18.95, ages 7 to 10), written by Margarita del Mazo, translated by Jon Brokenbow and illustrated by Concha Pasamar, leads us to a famous opera rather than a single performer. Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” (1875), set to a novella by Prosper Mérimée, was deemed a “perfect opera” by the biographer and critic Herbert Weinstock. Many of its melodies will be familiar to listeners who think they know nothing about classical music; in any event, they are gorgeous — irresistibly catchy and inventive, sun-splashed and viscerally exciting.
Plot synopses of “Carmen” traditionally depicted a young man reduced to despair and driven to violence by the charms of a wild woman who works in a cigarette factory and disdains conventional morality. This is still in the opera, should one choose to look for it, but today many of us are more likely to cheer for Carmen’s strength and freedom, and to look on Don José’s behavior as unhinged.
Del Mazo has elected to tell the story through the eyes of a sensitive young boy suddenly confronted with anger and jealousy that he does not understand. He admires Don José, who has been kind to him, and believes him a “dragon” rather than a “dragoon” (a guard in the mounted cavalry). But he loves his neighbor Carmen and plans to marry her someday, even though “she doesn’t know it yet.”
“She dances with one boy, then another, then another, then on her own, and then with another one again,” he marvels. “She dances so well you just can’t look away. The square is much prettier with Carmen in it.” It all ends tragically, of course, and one finds oneself mourning for the boy’s loss of innocence as much as for the doomed characters. Del Mazo’s tale is gently told, and Pasamar’s illustrations are often haunting and evocative. Still, my guess is that it is the opera itself, however one encounters it, that will bring a new generation to “Carmen.”
Tim Page is a professor emeritus of musicology at the University of Southern California and the author or editor of more than 20 books. He was a friend of Glenn Gould’s and edited “The Glenn Gould Reader,” a posthumous volume of the pianist’s writings.
