Music
Although Oscar Hammerstein II translated the libretto for Georges Bizet's opera Carmen from French into English for his Broadway production, "The music was pretty much left intact," explains Arts and Entertainment Editor Elisabeth Vincentelli, "but Hammerstein transferred the action to WWII America. Carmen's tobacco factory became Carmen Jones' parachute factory, bullfighter Escamillo became boxer Husky Miller, and so on. As if this weren't enough, there also was the 'small' detail of casting the show only with African-Americans."
Vincentelli goes on to say, "...many of the show's songs retain a surprising impact. The feverish intensity of 'Beat Out dat Rhythm on a Drum,' for instance, hasn't dimmed over the years, and the song's been covered by a wide variety of performers, from Pearl Bailey and Marc Almond to Mandy Patinkin." The majority of the actors performing the songs in the film Carmen Jones were dubbed. Even singer Harry Belafonte was dubbed (by LeVern Hutcherson), and Dorothy Dandridge was dubbed by Marilyn Horne (long before Horne became a famous singer).
Read more about this topic: Carmen Jones
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“And in the next instant, immediately behind them, Victor saw his former wife.
At once he lowered his gaze, automatically tapping his cigarette to dislodge the ash that had not yet had time to form. From somewhere low down his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From where Pan’s cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)