Becoming Carmen
Have you ever seen a show and wondered about a character’s backstory and what drives them? So have we.
Hastings’ new opera theatre company present a prologue to Carmen. Becoming Carmen is a new, innovative and unique piece of drama, illuminating these well-known characters and propelling the audience into an abridged version of the original opera (English translation by Chris Cowell).
In a dimly-lit tavern in 1930s pre-revolutionary Spain, we present a cabaret style first act. Dialogue and music from a range of styles allow the characters in Carmen to reveal more about their lives, motivations and intertwined relationships.
Every song and every word of dialogue in the Prologue brings us deeper into their world. We begin to truly understand who these characters are…and then it happens. Something truly dramatic brings Carmen and Don Jose together for the first time. The production has become Carmen! Becoming Carmen will engage, excite and entertain from the first note to the final curtain, challenging your preconception of both the original and the
artform itself.
Every Prologue Opera production is a unique, character-driven, two-part reimagining of a well-known opera.
PART ONE | PROLOGUE An original dramatic performance supported with
songs from a range of musical styles that tells the never-before-seen stories of key characters within the opera, before they appear in the original narrative.
PART TWO | OPERA A fast-paced and enthralling reduction of the full original opera, within which the characters you now understand, take on greater meaning to stir the emotions like never before.
Part theatre, part opera company, Prologue Opera is as passionate about pulling audiences into the world of opera as it is about reaching out to the community, involving schools, choirs & members of the local community in our work. Prologue Opera was founded by Hastings residents and experienced professional opera singers Celena Bridge and Anthony Flaum, both of whom
have sung principal roles for the UK’s leading opera companies.
