https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/05/d-day-veterans-and-world-leaders-arrive-in-portsmouth-to-vast-security
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/chiune-sugihara-google-doodle-today-japan-lithuania-holocaust-world-war-2-a9024781.html
Noel Kingsbury
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/11654287/How-to-sow-your-own-wildflower-meadow.html
backlighting
http://noels-garden.blogspot.com/2010/01/growing-perennials-in-grass.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/beloved-cambridge-strangled-woke-wars-not-yet/
zoe strimpel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxXgpD-ceRM
puntillero emilio rios torres
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILS74nkHuHQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEQKy9yrVw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IWyMUV1w2Q
Guitarrero
Agitador
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9386TOfIQI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJKO4sZP3jM
tartanero
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6ITmuWEqDw
12.37
12.42
14.17
14.32
15.30
Caballo
Destripado por El Toro Más Sanguinario de la Region Poblana
Los caballos han acompañado al hombre en guerras, largas y duras
travesias a lo largo de la historia. Y estos hijos de puta le pagan asi.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/04/tiananmen-square-massacre-marked-with-hong-kong-vigil
https://sheffieldtuc.co.uk/contact/
https://sheffieldtuc.co.uk/come-to-sheffield-may-day-saturday-4th-may-all-welcome/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/06/nigel-farage-under-fire-alleged-antisemitic-tropes-far-right-us-talkshow-alex-jones
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/garottel.html
file:///C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Temp/37663-Article%20Text-43683-1-10-20131112.pdf
Ruth Pike
At least 736 people, including 21 women, were executed between 1800 and
1899. In the 18th century, it is thought that at least 289 men and
seven women were put to death. It is not clear how complete earlier
records are and even modern ones are somewhat patchy.
At least 96 people, including five women, were garrotted between 1900 and
1935.
At least 126 people were garrotted in the post Civil War period,
including three women. Executions also took place by shooting
during this period and Spain’s last executions were by firing squad.
Shooting was more commonly handed down by military
tribunals, however, it is unclear why people were shot for
civilian murders. Most 20th century executions were for murder or
terrorist related crimes, although banditry remained a capital crime,
certainly into the 1950’s.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/crime-and-punishment-a-19th-century-love-affair
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-48213444
According to the website of Fundación Secretariado Gitano ("Gitano
Secretariat Foundation"), in the Spanish prison system the Spanish
Romani women represent 25% of the incarcerated feminine population,
while Spanish Romani people represent 1.4% of the total Spanish
population. 64% of the detentions of gitano people are drug
trafficking-related. 93.2% of women inmates for drug trafficking are
gitanas. 13.2% of the total drug trafficking-related inmates are of
gitano ethnicity.
[24]
Francisco de Asís Rivera Ordóñez
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJC7M10sekI&list=PLB4692E6BF2BAD3C4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48173357
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/02/university-of-cambridge-criticised-for-hosting-anti-feminist-group-justice-for-men-and-boys
https://news.sky.com/story/seaman-describes-life-onboard-a-british-nuclear-submarine-11709735
https://www.itv.com/news/2019-05-02/theresa-may-has-just-days-to-seal-her-brexit-destiny/
https://www.historyireland.com/the-famine/charles-trevelyan-and-the-great-irish-famine/
http://blog.blo.org/the-art-of-the-bullfight
matthew erikson
Summer 2019
Carmen
Music by Georges Bizet
Limited inventory
remains—Buy now to secure your seats!
She swore to live free and die free. He
made sure she got her wish.
Meet the hottest woman in all of Seville—a free
spirit who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go get it. But what
happens when the attention she attracts turns obsessive? Find out in
this pulse-pounding, picturesque production.
Production New to San Francisco Opera
Meet the
Cast
Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy
Sung in French with English supertitles
luding one intermission
Fans of independent women like Beyonce and Rihanna, free spirits,
breaking the rules and catchy tunes.
https://sfopera.com/1819season/carmen/
Cast and Creative
CAST
PERFORMANCES
June 5, 11, 14, 20, 23, 26, 29, 2019
The Art of the Bullfight
If you want a more complete picture of Spanish culture, study
bullfighting. Famous writers of various nationalities have
eloquently expressed that sentiment from Federico García Lorca to
Ernest Hemingway, most notably in the American author’s Death in
the Afternoon. “It is impossible to believe the emotional and
spiritual intensity and the pure, classic beauty that can be
produced by a man, an animal and a piece of scarlet serge,”
Hemingway wrote in 1932.
Although he never visited the country, Georges Bizet (along with
Carmen co-librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy) knew
that no story set in Spain would be complete without channeling the
passion and mythos intrinsic to the bullfight—or toreo as it
is known in Spanish-speaking countries. That fascination continues
today with films such as Blood and Sand, based on Vicente
Blasco Ibáñez’s best-selling novel, and Pedro Almodóvar’s
Matador.
Yet for outsiders there are still a number of misconceptions
surrounding this vital aspect of Spanish culture. First, as Edward
F. Stanton writes in his comprehensive Handbook of Spanish
Popular Culture, bullfighting is neither sport nor
entertainment. It is ceremony, a way of life deeply rooted in
Spanish society—in effect, a solemn and sacred dance of life and
death. What’s more, bullfighting is theater, as cathartic as ancient
Greek tragedy. Not a competition between man and bull, but, as
Stanton writes, “a mutual participation in a prescribed ritual, or
as some have suggested, a kind of sublimated lovemaking.”
But isn’t bullfighting inherently cruel and savage, in which the
bull or (less likely) the man must die? Spaniards also fervently
debate the question. “Take away the bull and we’ll see what is
left,” wrote Spanish author Antonio Gala. “Would we recognize
ourselves without the passion for and against the bull?” For the
bull is the country’s most identifiable symbol. As early as the
first century A.D., the Iberian Peninsula was described by the Greek
geographer Strabo as a dried, stretched bull’s hide. Cattle still
populate the Spanish countryside—in actuality and as 20-foot-tall,
black billboards in the shape of a fighting bull (toro bravo).
Originally advertisements for Soberano (“Sovereign”) brandy, these
billboards have become national artistic monuments.
Fans will trace the origins of Spanish bullfighting as far back
as ancient cave paintings and Roman hunts, although the historical
record isn’t so certain. What we do know is that for centuries, the
Catholic Church in Spain registered its displeasure with
bullfighting’s pagan associations, including one edict dating from
447 A.D. Two popes even attempted to outlaw the spectacles in the
sixteenth century. During the age of the Enlightenment, Spanish
monarchs also tried to prohibit the bulls, yet with little success.
Government policy changed entirely during the dictatorship of
Francisco Franco (1939–1975), when bullfighting was promoted owing
to its strong connection to Spanish tradition. Today, in spite of
protests by animal rights advocates and increasing government
regulations, bullfighting remains popular.
According to one count, there are approximately 8,000
bull-related events celebrated each year in Spain. These include not
just the formal bullfight or corrida de toros, but the
encierro or running of the bulls immortalized by Hemingway in
The Sun Also Rises; capeas, the informal caping of
calves, cows, or bulls during fiestas in thousands of town squares;
and recortadores or competitions of bull-dodgers practiced by
amateurs. In contrast, bullfighting is a centuries-old profession.
Nowadays most bullfighters or toreros are trained in formal
bullfighting schools, including one in San Diego. In 1976, it became
legal for women to be professional bullfighters in Spain.
In Bizet’s Carmen, there are notable inaccuracies about
bullfighting, including the very term toreador which does not
exist in Spanish. (It was purportedly invented by Bizet so that the
syllables of the word would correspond with the music for the
Toreador Song.) However, as Stanton notes in his history of
bullfighting, “the most marginal ethnic group in all of Spain, the
Gypsies, have made up a disproportionate percentage of matadores,”
particularly in more recent times. The hot-blooded Carmen has met
her match not with the cool and aloof Don José but with the brave
Escamillo.
In the end, passion, dignity, and tradition have become
synonymous with Spanish bullfighting. Without bullfighters, as the
aficionado Fernando Claramunt remarked, “Spain would be like any
other place in the world. They are modern man’s last connection to
the ancient, heroic past.”
https://opera.org.au/whatson/events/carmen-sydney
This vibrant production of Bizet's opera features gypsy girls and
bullfighting boys in eye-popping colours.
http://santiagotalavera.com/works/goya-y-la-abolicion-de-la-tauromaquia/
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/women-and-bullfighting-9781859739563/
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/21/cambridge-university-press-to-back-down-over-china-censorship
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/30/cambridge-university-study-how-it-profited-colonial-slavery
https://psmag.com/economics/in-crimes-of-passion-women-get-benefit-of-the-doubt-20079
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/26/anti-bullfighting-party-set-for-spanish-election-breakthrough
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/cwru-cwr030308.php
Gary Wayne Otte (December 21, 1971 – September 13, 2017) was an
Ohio death row inmate[1]
who was sentenced to death and executed[2]
for the 1992 murders of Robert Wasikowski (May 30, 1930 – February 12, 1992)
and Sharon Kostura (December 12, 1946 - February 13, 1992), whom he killed
in back-to-back robberies in February 1992 in
Parma, Ohio.
Background
Gary Otte was born on December 21, 1971 in
Terre Haute, Indiana. He was described as a 'very sad little boy' who
began using drugs and drinking alcohol at 10 and first attempted suicide at
14. The killings took place six years later, when Otte was 20. At his
October 1992 trial, Gary Otte was sentenced to death for murder.
Otte's IQ was purportedly only 85,[3]
although this would not bar him from execution. Otte was involved in a
lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Ohio's execution procedures,
alongside fellow death row inmates
Ronald Phillips and Raymond Tibbetts, which would ultimately be
dismissed in late June 2017. Phillips' execution followed less than a month
later on July 26. Otte made several last minute pleas for clemency, all of
which would be rejected. These included claims that Ohio's
lethal injection protocol violated the
Eighth Amendment, and that his age at the time of the killings would
make his execution unconstitutional. All of these claims were eventually
denied.
Ronald Ray "Ron" Phillips (October 10, 1973 – July 26, 2017) was
an
Ohio death row inmate[1]
who was sentenced to death and executed for the 1993 rape and murder of
Sheila Evans (September 10, 1989 – January 18, 1993), the 3-year-old
daughter of his girlfriend, Fae Amanda Evans (March 29, 1967 – July 8,
2008), after an extended period of physical and sexual abuse against the
child.[2]
Fae Evans was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangering
for her involvement and sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison. She
died of leukemia on July 8, 2008, aged 41, at the state prison hospital in
Columbus, Ohio.
Background
Phillips was born on October 10, 1973, in
Akron, Ohio, the fifth of seven children to William D. Phillips Sr.
(August 18, 1948 – September 29, 2009) and Donna M. Phillips (December 17,
1947 – January 11, 2016). His childhood nickname was "Bubby". Ron Phillips
allegedly suffered a traumatic childhood which involved mental illness and
physical and sexual abuse by his father, mainly, and cousin.
Issues with
Ohio's executions
Phillips is also notable for how drawn out his case was. He spent over half
of his life on death row since he was sentenced on September 16, 1993, and
he had a total of 9 execution dates set between November 2013 and July 2017.
[3]
His first execution date of November 14, 2013 was stayed to consider his
request to donate his non-vital organs before his execution, a request which
was later denied on the grounds that he would not have enough time to
recover before his new execution date of July 2, 2014. Several execution
dates were set and stayed for not only Phillips, but several other inmates,
as a result of questions regarding the constitutionality of Ohio's
lethal injection protocol, as well as whether Ohio had access to
execution drugs. A group of inmates, consisting of Phillips,
Gary
Otte, and Raymond Tibbetts, challenged Ohio's execution protocol and
thus a federal judge granted them a
preliminary injunction on January 26, 2017. The
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled 8–6 in favour of the State
of Ohio on June 28, 2017. The
US Supreme Court has not, as of February 2018, commented or voted on the
ruling. Otte was executed in September 2017, while Governor John Kasich
commuted Tibbetts’ sentence to life without parole in July 2018.
http://www.murashev.com/opera/Carmen_libretto_French_English
No. 25 March and Chorus
CHORUS
Here they come! Here's the cuadrilla!
The toreadors' cuadrilla!
The sun flashes on their lances!
Up in the air with your caps and hats!
Here they are! Here's the cuadrilla,
the toreadors' cuadrilla!
Here, coming into the square
first of all, marching on foot,
is the constable with his ugly mug!
Down with him! Down with him!
And now as they go by
let's cheer the bold chulos!
Bravo! Hurrah! Glory to courage!
Here come the bold chulos!
Look at the banderilleros!
See what a swaggering air!
See them! See them!
What looks, and how brilliantly
the ornaments glitter
on their fighting dress!
Here are the banderilleros!
Another cuadrilla's coming!
Look at the picadors!
|
Comme ils sont beaux !
Comme ils vont du fer de leur lance,
harceler le flanc des taureaux !
(Paraît enfin Escamillo, ayant près de lui Carmen,
radieuse et dans un costume éclatant.)
L'Espada ! Escamillo !
C'est l'Espada, la fine lame,
celui qui vient terminer tout,
qui paraît à la fin du drame
et qui frappe le dernier coup !
Vive Escamillo ! ah bravo !
Les voici ! voici la quadrille ! etc.
ESCAMILLO (à Carmen)
Si tu m'aimes, Carmen, tu pourras, tout à l'heure,
être fière de moi.
CARMEN
Ah ! je t'aime, Escamillo, je t'aime,
et que je meure si j'ai jamais aimé
quelqu'un autant que toi !
TOUS LES DEUX
Ah ! je t'aime !
Oui, je t'aime !
LES ALGUAZILS
Place, place ! place ! au seigneur Acalde !
(Petite marche à l'orchestre. Sur cette marche
entre au fond l'acalde précédé et suivi des
alguazils. Pendant ce temps Frasquita et Mercédès
s'approchent de Carmen.)
FRASQUITA
Carmen, un bon conseil, ne reste pas ici !
|
How handsome they are!
How they'll torment the bulls' flanks
with the tips of their lances!
(At last Escamillo appears, accompanied by a
radiant and magnificently dressed Carmen.)
The Matador! Escamillo!
It's the Matador, the skilled swordsman,
he who comes to finish things off,
who appears at the drama's end
and strikes the last blow!
Long live Escamillo! Ah bravo!
Here they are! here's the cuadrilla! etc.
ESCAMILLO (to Carmen)
If you love me, Carmen soon
you can be proud of me.
CARMEN
Ah! I love you, Escamillo, I love you,
and may I die if I have ever loved
anyone as much as you!
TOGETHER
Ah! I love you!
Yes, I love you! |
http://www.liquisearch.com/susan_mcclary/the_beethoven_and_rape_controversy
n the January 1987 issue of Minnesota Composers Forum Newsletter,
McClary wrote of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony:
- The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is
one of the most horrifying moments in
music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up
energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a
rapist incapable of attaining release.
This sentence elicited and continues to elicit a great range of
responses. McClary subsequently rephrased this passage in Feminine
Endings:
- The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes
in the history of music. The problem Beethoven has constructed for this
movement is that it seems to begin before the subject of the symphony
has managed to achieve its identity. (128)
She goes on to conclude that "The Ninth Symphony is probably our most
compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have
organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment" (129). The critiques
of McClary discussed below refer primarily to the original version of the
passage.
Readers sympathetic to the passage may be connecting it to the opinion
that Beethoven's music is in some way "phallic" or "hegemonic," terms often
used in modern feminist studies scholarship. These readers may feel that to
be able to enjoy Beethoven's music one must submit to or agree with the
values expressed, or that it requires or forces upon the listener a mode or
way of listening that is oppressive, and that these are overtly expressed,
as
rape, in the
Ninth. For related views, see discussion above, as well as the article
"Criticism and sonata form".
Several commentators have objected to McClary's characterizations. Four
examples are:
- "Painter Jailed for Committing Masterpieces" by Robert Anton Wilson
(also Wilson, Robert A. (1998). Everything Is Under Control:
Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-ups, p. 64. ISBN 0-06-273417-2.)
- Historical Review Press: "The Godfather of the Multi-Cult Nightmare"
by Robert Stacy McCain
- "The Feminist Interpretations Debate, Concluded" by Glenn Lamont.
Leaving aside readers whose main interest is political, there are other
reasons readers might take offense at McClary's sentence. The passage could
be construed as unfair to Beethoven if one assumes that the "throttling
murderous rapist's rage" putatively expressed in the music is supposed to
have come from Beethoven's own habitual thoughts and feelings, which McClary
does not suggest. Scholars and historians have found no evidence that
Beethoven ever committed a rape or harbored an intense urge to do so.
Numerous musicological academics, however, have raised more serious and
substantial objections to
McClary’s scholarship, including (but not limited to) her notorious
remark about rape. Four examples are:
- Music theorist Pieter van den Toorn has complained that McClary's
polemics negate the asocial autonomy of absolute music; he is concerned
with Schenker-style formal analysis. Van den Toorn complains, for
example, that “Fanned by an aversion for male sexuality, which it
depicts as something brutal and contemptible, irrelevancies are being
read into the music.” Van den Toorn's complaint was rebutted by
musicologist Ruth Solie, but van den Toorn responded with a whole book
on these issues.
- Composer Elaine Barkin, in another extended critique, complained
that “McClary’s voice tone, language, attitudes all too resoundingly
perpetuate and reinstantiate those very ‘patriarchal practices’ she is
deploring.” McClary briefly dismissed Barkin's critique as "a
caricature."
- Musicologist Paula Higgins, in another robust critique of McClary's
work, has observed that “one wonders… if has not strategically co-opted
feminism as an excuse for guerrilla attacks on the field.” Higgins
complains of McClary's “truculent verbal assaults on musicological straw
men”, and observes that “For all the hip culture critique imported from
other fields, McClary has left the cobwebs of patriarchal musicological
thought largely intact.” ” Higgins is also critical of McClary's
citation practice as it concerns other scholars in the area of feminist
musical criticism.
- Ethnomusicologist Henry Kingsbury has criticized McClary’s
inattention to the Friedrich Schiller poem set in the fourth movement of
the Ninth Symphony; he also lists numerous works by Beethoven and
Schubert that he says contradict McClary’s claims regarding violence in
Beethoven as well as her argument about the construction of gender in
music.
Another source of controversy is the possibility that McClary's passage
trivializes the horrific experience of actual rape victims by reducing it to
mere metaphor. Even readers sympathetic to criticism of Beethoven's music
may find that pinpointing a vague, unintended colonial program as "rape" is
inaccurate.
The pianist and critic Charles Rosen has also commented on the famous
passage. He avoids taking offense on any of the grounds mentioned above, and
is willing to admit sexual metaphors to musical analysis. Rosen's
disagreement is simply with McClary's assessment of the music:
- We have first her characterization of the moment of recapitulation
in the first movement of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony:
- The phrase about the murderous rage of the rapist has since been
withdrawn, which indicates that McClary realized it posed a problem, but
it has the great merit of recognizing that something extraordinary is
taking place here, and McClary's metaphor of sexual violence is not a
bad way to describe it. The difficulty is that all metaphors
oversimplify, like those entertaining little stories that music critics
in the nineteenth century used to invent about works of music for an
audience whose musical literacy was not too well developed. I do not,
myself, find the cadence frustrated or dammed up in any constricting
sense, but only given a slightly deviant movement which briefly
postpones total fulfillment.
- To continue the sexual imagery, I cannot think that the rapist
incapable of attaining release is an adequate analogue, but I hear the
passage as if Beethoven had found a way of making an orgasm last for
sixteen bars. What causes the passage to be so shocking, indeed, is the
power of sustaining over such a long phrase what we expect as a brief
explosion. To McClary's credit, it should be said that some kind of
metaphorical description is called for, and even necessary, but I should
like to suggest that none will be satisfactory or definitive.
McClary also notes that she "can say something nice about Beethoven",
saying of his String Quartet, Op. 132, "Few pieces offer so as vivid an
image of shattered subjectivity the opening of Op. 132.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48458480
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/06/edinburgh-universitys-lgbt-network-resign-en-masse-amid-row/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/24/naomi-wolf-admits-blunder-over-victorians-and-sodomy-executions
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-political-scientist-defends-white-identity-politics-eric-kaufmann-whiteshift-book
https://news.sky.com/story/poor-performance-in-european-elections-could-finish-off-change-uk-11720178
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2019/05/eh-carr-what-is-history-truth-subjectivity-facts
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0001.109/--book-reviews?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Carmen is Bizet’s best-known opera, and one of the most popular
operas of all time. It was first performed in 1875 and has been a central
part of the operatic repertoire ever since. Part of its appeal is its
salacious story, initially denounced by critics as immoral, and its vivid
range of characters from Carmen, the passionate gypsy to Escamillo, the
heroic bullfighter.
https://www.if.com.au/opera-australias-carmen-set-to-seduce-audiences-across-australia/
This abject rubbish reflects very badly on Opera Australia. I've made it
clear in various places on this page that any notion that Escamillo is 'the
heroic bullfighter' is wide of the mark. What Opera Australia has to say
about the reception of the opera Carmen is the product of wishful thinking,
abysmal ignorance or simple failure to do any research before writing.
Has Carmen really been 'a central part of the operatice repertoir since
its first performance in 1875? Susan McClary gives the dismal facts.
From Chapter 2 of her book, 'The genesis of Bizet's Carmen:'
'As everyone knows, the first production of Carmen was received very
badly ... Several reviews appeared in the newspapers in the days that
followed ... they were almost uniformly devastating.'
From Chapter 6, 'The reception of Carmen:'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJC7M10sekI
francesco rosi
act 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po6ua0ZEPic
An extract from the libretto of Act 4 of Bizet's opera
'Carmen.' The libretto is based on the novella by
Prosper
Mérimée.
ESCAMILLO (à Carmen)
Si tu m'aimes, Carmen, tu pourras, tout à l'heure,
être fière de moi.
CARMEN
Ah ! je t'aime, Escamillo, je t'aime,
et que je meure si j'ai jamais aimé
quelqu'un autant que toi !
TOUS LES DEUX
Ah ! je t'aime !
Oui, je t'aime !
ESCAMILLO (to Carmen)
If you love me, Carmen soon
you can be proud of me.
CARMEN
Ah! I love you, Escamillo, I love you,
and may I die if I have ever loved
anyone as much as you!
TOGETHER
Ah! I love you!
Yes, I love you!
The bullfighter Escamillo is soon to fight in the
bullring. It's his prowess in the bullring which make Carmen proud of him.
This would be a bullfight taking place long before the horses of the
picadors were given a protective mattress, the peto. How many horses were
killed in each bullfight before the introduction of the peto? Many, many
horses, often as many as forty.
This is film of a bullfight which shows the horrific fate of those
horses - the gorings, the disembowellings, the intestines hanging
down, the dead horses lying in the ring - sights which didn't shock
Prosper Mérimée in the least (before
writing Carmen, he wrote approvingly of bullfighting) and which didn't shock
the fictional Carmen in the least, it seems, judging by the love she has for
a man who took part in these spectacles and inflicted such suffering.
A
contemporary film showing similar scenes of disembowelling Before the film can be viewed, it's necessary to sign in.
An extract from the publicity material of Cambridge
University Press on Susan McClary's book Carmen:
"Whatever else it is, Carmen is emphatically
not a story about fate" ... No
critic has attempted to interpret Carmen without sexual politics ... In this
reclamatory project McClary follows Catherine Clement, who has called Carmen
"the image, foreseen and doomed, of a woman who refuses masculine yokes and
who must pay for it with here life."
As well as this:
'McClary's mission is to rescue her from the pejorative
labels men have attached to her and to make of her a feminist hero and
martyr.'
This is Catherine Clement on the opera Carmen.
I have always heard permanent ridicule heaped on this opera;
no music has been more mockingly misappropriated. Toreadors, blazing music,
and a gaudy Spain ... They always forget the death ... But
Carmen's music, ridiculed by the
North, in the south of France has become the symbolic and ritual theme for
bullfight entrances, for paseos
where, dressed in silk and gold, the still-intact toreros
parade. This is one of opera's inspired and unconscious transferences: music
devoted to a woman convokes virile heroes. And the heroes are just as
brilliant and combative as Carmen, playing with the lure and the animal with
horns as if they were daggers.
'Holiday in Seville. The bright white arenas of Maestranza [Maestranza
is the bullfighting arena in Seville] are joyous; decorations painted in
golden yellow trace baroque arabesques on the walls; the tall red doors with
their black nails are wide open, and so are the black iron gates, enclosing
the amphitheater with a necklace of openwork. There is buying and selling:
cakes, cigarettes. It is noise and jostling, a humming, harmless festival.'
As well as this:
'the very pure, very free Carmen.'
Two accounts of the disembowelling of horses during a
bullfight, including the account of Prosper
Mérimée.
See also the section on my page on bullfighting, 'horse disembowelling and
bullfighting's 'Golden Age.'
The events they witnessed continued unchanged
until the the protective mattress, the peto was adopted. It was first used
in 1927 and mandated by law in 1928.
The peto put an
end to most of the horrific injuries to the horses taking part in the
bullfight, but not to all injuries, including horrific injuries - horses have been severely
injured in the bullring ever since.
This account is by a spectator at a bullfight who was sickened by
what he saw: Sir Alfred Munnings. It comes from his autobiography, published
in 1955. The account is based on what he saw at a pre-peto bullfight.
'I have sat at dinners given by the American Ambassador in Spain with a
titled Spaniard as my neighbour, hearing things of bullfighting not written
in books. Have we read in those novels extolling the matador, of living
skeletons - once horses - ridden not only to slaughter but in a tawdry
procession? Have we read of punching, horning, or weeks of durance between
Sundays, with flies crawling over festered wounds, as the victims, not
killed, await in the stables NEXT SUNDAY’S SPORT? Watch such a procession,
and see some fifteen sorry steeds, doomed, starved, carrying heavy, stuffed
out picadors. No wonder the horses are hurled to the ground, overweighted,
weak and half-dead.
'Passing the tall archway, I had seen a little white horse. To my surprise
it was in the procession, carrying a great picador, and the next thing we
saw was the little white horse and another in the ring. This humble white
horse stood there blindfolded, his ears stuffed and tied, little knowing
what he was there for. Oh, little white horse; Little White Horse!’ I kept
repeating to myself, as the bull put a long horn right through the little
horses neck, just above the windpipe.
'Imagine the fright of the horse, blindfolded and deaf, at the sudden
stab. Then the bull, his horn through the neck of the horse began dragging
it slowly round with him, the picador dismounting and others in the ring
trying to free the horse, now no longer a horse, but a holiday victim, the
blood running down its white jaw and neck.
'When cleared, and the picador remounted, the bull charged, hurling man
and horse backwards with a crash against the wooden barrier. ‘Oh little
white horse.’ I said to myself and, the picador being rescued, and the bull
attracted away, they beat the horse to its feet with blood streaming from a
wound in its chest, down its white legs. The time was up for the horses, and
the white horse and the other - a starved emaciated bag mare were led out
to come in again. The little white horse’s end came later.
'The bay, its teeth chattering with fear, having been in before, stood
near the barrier below us, the motley red and white striped bandage over its
offside eye, its ears stuffed with tow, and tied with what seemed to be old
electric wire. The Bull made short work of the bay horning the horse from
behind. The picador cleared, and the horse beaten to its feet by red-shirted
attendants. There, from the underpart of its belly hung a large
protuberance of bowels. With head outstretched a man hauling it along on
the end of the rein, another hitting it with a stick, it was led out.
'Not a soul cared, excepting ourselves.
'But what of the white horse? He too was lifted and hurled on his back, to
the cheers of the crowd, and when beaten to his feet was stomping on
his own entrails, which stretched and split like pink tissue paper.'
A short extract from Prosper
Mérimée's
book on bullfighting, published in 1830. He wrote the novel on which Bizet's
'Carmen' is based and he approved of bullfighting, he had a passion for
bullfighting.
Prosper
Mérimée,
on horses which are injured and fall to the ground
'Once again
on his feet, the picador, if he can get his horse up, remounts. Though the
poor beast may be losing streams of blood, though its entrails drag on the
ground and twine about its legs, it must face the bull as long as it can
stand. When it is down to stay, the picador leaves the ring and returns
immediately on a fresh mount.