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:
“Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you—like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist—or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)