You Don’t Own Me: The Myth and Magic of Bizet’s 'Carmen' | Aria Code Podcast
Carmen is maybe the most famous heroine in all of opera. She’s a woman of Romani descent living in 19th century Spain, sensual and self-confident, aware of the power she wields over men — and she enjoys it. In her signature aria, popularly known as the “Habanera,” she describes herself as a bird who can’t be captured. True to her own word, Carmen — and what she represents — is hard to pin down.
When “Carmen” premiered in Paris in 1875, it was deemed wildly immoral. Carmen becomes intrigued by a soldier, Don José, who initially pays her no attention. She seduces him, Don José abandons his fiancée to run away with her, and one thing leads to another (this is opera, after all) — he winds up murdering Carmen in a fit of jealous rage. One interpretation is that this is the story of a man giving into temptation and meeting his downfall. A more modern view would position Carmen as a proto-feminist. She’s a woman who refuses to be controlled, and that puts her life in danger.
But perhaps Carmen’s greatest irony is that she is both a complex character and a full-blown stereotype of Romani women. In this episode of Aria Code, host Rhiannon Giddens and guests unpack the myths and the magic of Georges Bizet’s "Carmen," and Clémentine Margaine brings it home with a performance of “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” from the Metropolitan Opera stage.
Guests in this episode include:
French mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine first performed in “Carmen” as a member of the children’s chorus. Shortly after graduating from the Paris Conservatory, she joined the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she sang her first performances in the title role. Since then, she’s performed "Carmen" at opera houses all over the world.
Susan McClary is a pioneer in feminist music criticism. She’s a musicologist at Case Western Reserve University whose research focuses on the cultural analysis of music, both the European canon and contemporary popular genres. She’s authored 11 books, including "Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality" and the Cambridge Opera Handbook on “Carmen.”
Ionida Costache is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology and an affiliate of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She is of Romani-Roma descent, and her work explores the legacies of historical trauma inscribed in Romani music, sound and art. Her family likes to pass on the story of the time her great-grandfather performed the cimbalom for Theodore Roosevelt at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Rosamaria Kostic Cisneros wears many hats. She is a professional dancer, dance historian and critic, Romani studies Scholar, Flamenco historian, as well as a sociologist, curator and peace activist. A research-artist at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research, she works to bring arts and culture to vulnerable groups. She was introduced to flamenco by her Spanish-Roma mother during their frequent trips to Seville.
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Aria Code is a podcast that pulls back the curtain on some of the most famous arias in opera history, with insight from the biggest voices of our time, including Roberto Alagna, Diana Damrau, Sondra Radvanovsky, and many others. Hosted by Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens, Aria Code is produced in partnership with @metopera.
Each episode dives into one aria — a feature for a single singer — and explores how and why these brief musical moments have imprinted themselves in our collective consciousness and what it takes to stand on the Met stage and sing them.