Carmen — between Mérimée and Bizet

Interview with Marta Sartova

Jan Płonka: What is Mérimée’s Carmen like and how does she differ from Bizet’s?

Maria Sartova: There are quite a few differences between Prosper Mérimée’s work and Georges Bizet’s opera. On the one hand Bizet is faithful to the original story, building it on the basis of the two main protagonists — Carmen and Don José — but on the other he introduces characters which do not exist in the novella and which are of symbolic significance. Escamillo is an identifier of all of Carmen’s lovers, while Micaëla symbolises Don José’s mother. Bizet’s and Mérimée’s Carmen is a story of love, death, jealousy and search for individual freedom. Both works take place in the magical, mysterious and dark world of Spanish Gypsies.

What is your Carmen like?

Carmen is the axis for the whole work, although, paradoxically, she is not the main character for me. Carmen is something more than just an object of desire. Strong, charismatic, uncompromising, mysterious — she fascinates everyone, regardless of their gender. She is a femme fatale — sister of Salome, Cleopatra, Dalila… She is a woman living in opposition to established moral, religious or cultural laws.

In you staging Carmen is not an erotic figure — as she is often portrayed.

Carmen is very erotic but not provocative. She fascinates with her naturalness and sensuality. There is something primitive, animalistic, at times cynical and perverse in her. Her moral fight in the cruel male world leads to a labyrinth of passion, pain, desire from which there is no escape, like in a whirlwind of love and death leading to self-destruction.