Word: habaneras
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First impression was to wonder why anyone so flagrantly sexy as her Carmen should trouble to work for a living in a cigaret factory. She sang the Habanera belligerently, as if defying the world. She turned on bewildered Don Jose like a tigress, sidled up to the captain of the guards like an oldtime cinema vamp. The stage scarcely seemed to hold her. Ponselle's voice is naturally sumptuous, but she was too busy ranting to do justice by Bizet's music...
...from an administrative office, allures: but by the tropics the palm is held most imperiously for him who would dare. And if fruit and sugar production fails to fill the craving for the Caribbees, still there is sunshine, and white flannels for the asking, and doubtless castanets and the habanera. Who would quibble when Cuba offers herself to the habitue of Sever...
...loveliness has always been a notable attraction for the truly discerning connoisseur of grand opera, perhaps failed to personify the sudden, mercurial, fate-defeated Carmen. Critics could not forget that she was more Czech than Spanish, that her French was bad, that she was unfaithful to detail, that the "Habanera" should never have been sung from a wheelbarrow nor the "Sequidilla" from the garrison table. They postponed their verdict. But the mass of the audience perceiving these aesthetic errors, clapped and cheered after every act. After the last, they tossed their roses to the stage...
...Troubadour song, for d'Hardelet's "Lesson of the Fan," for "Swanee River" and "The Spirit of the Air," words and music by herself, dedicated to Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh. "L'amour est une oiseau rebelle. . . ." The customers at the Palace sat alert for the "Habanera" of the World's Greatest Carmen, but the high comb would not stay in the thin bobbed hair, and the flaming shawl was strangely dull. True there was a hint of the old gestures, the old fire, but the Palace audience could not remember, saved their applause for Naughton & Gold...
This gloomy tale is, of course, made for music, and the gay Habanera mingled fantastically with tones and orchestrations of sombre tragedy...