Reproducing Carmen in the United States

Chapter 9 explains that Carmen proved an ideal vehicle for the new technologies of the twentieth century, embraced by the new recording artists whose prestige was borrowed from the operatic world. The young American opera star Geraldine Farrar, building on the legacies of Emma Calvé and Maria Gay, enjoyed an unprecedented and unmistakably modern celebrity as Carmen, born of her ability to exploit the confluence of operatic performance, recordings, and the silent film industry. In this context, the Metropolitan Opera’s attempt to stage a genuine Spanish opera in the guise of Enrique Granados’s Goyescas was undermined by comparison with the vibrant New York traditions of Carmen in the winter of 1915–16, when the fashion for all things Spanish was so intense that Carl Van Vechten dubbed it “the Spanish blaze.”