Word: carmen
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Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Carmen, with Risë Stevens and Nadine Conner...
Composer Meyerowitz had done his best to keep up with the fast-moving plot. The singers, particularly little Negro Soprano Muriel (Carmen Jones) Rahn, who played the part of the housekeeper, did their best with the difficult intervals in his arias. But for most of the evening, the best the Stravinsky-model music achieved was the role of a first-class sound-track accompaniment. Poet Hughes's story could always manage without the music; but the music, for all the exciting quality that Composer Meyerowitz had given it, needed company...
...chef-d'oeuvre of the evening in Roland Petit's much-discussed "Carmen." This ballet returns to the sensual, impetuous spirit of the Merimee novel, although its score uses excerpts from Bizet's opera. Rence Jeanmaire is a seductive and fiery Carmen. When she is on the stage the downfall of Don Jose, danced by Petit, becomes completely believable. Jeanmaire and Petit dance together with great smoothness and polish; they are both dancers of the first rank. Serge Perrault and Belinda Wright dance supporting parts with skill...
...Collette Marchand, who also stars in "L'Oeuf a la Coque," dances beautifully in a more traditional style. "Le Rendevous" is a somber and moody ballet of Paris which features Henry Danton. As good as they are, these suffer by comparison with such excitingly imaginative spectacles as "Carmen" and "L'Oeuf a la Coque...
Gladys Swarthout's fiery Carmen was played without the exaggerated gestures common to the Met's gigantic stage; Tenor Robert Rounseville brought a matinée idol's profile to Don José, but obviously had to work hard to restrain the grimaces that ordinarily go with a big voice. Like all the others, Baritone Robert Merrill as Escamillo had to unlearn one of the cardinal rules of opera-taking musical cues from the orchestra leader. The singers set the musical pace of the show because, roaming their nine sets, they were sometimes 200 feet from...