On March 3, 1875, in Paris, the premiere of the opera Carmen by George Bizet (1938-1875) took place; the work was written on the eponymous short novel by Prosper Mérimée. In this brilliant drama of the French composer, full of boiling passions and fascinating music, the main character, the charming gypsy woman Carmen, became a symbol of the fiery temperament and the free spirit. Deeply hurt by the complete failure of the opera on its initial performance, the Bizet died three months later, not anticipating the world-wide renown, attained by his masterpiece. Bizet’s work is not only on the top of the world’s most performed operas, but is also the subject of dozens of transcriptions for various instruments, ensembles and orchestras. But turning Carmen into a ballet was a mad boldness dreamed of by great Russian prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, slightly bored with endless classics.

The history of the creation of the Carmen Suite ballet suite by Rodion Schedrin is a real thriller. Plisetskaya longed to dance something new, something of her own. “The thought of Carmen was constantly alive in me, now smoldering somewhere deep, now exploding imperatively” – we read in her memories. “Who did I not talk with about my dreams?! I decided to sway Shostakovitch, and he softly but adamantly refused. His main argument was: ‘I fear Bizet’ – uttered with a half-jocular tone. Then I turned to Khachaturian, who also refused. And behold – a new character comes to the stage.  In late 1966, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba (‘Cuban National Ballet’) came on a concert tour to Moscow. A production was in progress, staged by their chief ballet master Alberto Alonso. With the very first motion it felt as if a snake bit me. This is the language of Carmen, her grace, her world! In the intermission I made a dash behind the scenes: “Alberto, how would you like to stage Carmen for me?”  Alonso agreed with the same fervour, but now there was the  great difficulty of having to persuade the Soviet officials to invite a foreign national to work at the Bolshoi. Fortunately, the choreographer was from sister-country Cuba. He arrived in Moscow with the completed libretto, and composer Rodion Schedrin (1933), the husband of Plitsetskaya, undertook the music. Here’s his story: “Our memory is very tightly connected with the musical images of the immortal opera. This is how the idea of transcription came. I had chosen the genre, so now I had to choose the instrumentation, too;  to decide which instruments can adequately compensate for the absence of human voices and emphasize the inherent choreographic nature of the music. So I chose the ensemble – strings and percussive instruments. Ballet and opera are undoubtedly kindred arts, but each of them has its own regularities. The ballet orchestra, in my opinion, ought to sound a few degrees “hotter” than the operatic. And it has some more “narrating” to do. I worked on the score with earnest zeal.  Rendering homage to Bizet’s genius, I tried to do this homage not in a servile manner, but rather in a creative one, and to take advantage of the virtuosic capabilities of the chosen composition.”

An important contribution in the exceptional performance of the ballet had also the artist Boris Messerer, who turned the stage into a metaphorical arena of life. The premiere took place on April 20, 1967, at the Bolshoy Theater under the direction of Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Maya Plissetskaya as Carmen became a world celebrity. She is the perfect Carmen, the embodiment of a rebellious and indomitable spirit. Later she shared that to her, the heroine had become into a symbol of the free personality that led a battle with the incumbent power. But together with the adoration of audiences (and with the Havana premiere following in a few months, with Alicia Alonso in the role of Carmen), the joy was darkened by the Minister of Culture of the USSR, Ekaterina Furtseva, who denounced the ballet’s excessive eroticism and formalism:  “You have made the heroine of the Spanish people into a woman of immoral behavior.” There followed battles about the right to show the ballet in other countries outside the Soviet Union. Shchedrin was also criticized for his experiment with the classic operatic heritage. Fortunately, these disputes have long remained in the past and the Carmen Ballet Suite in the Bizet-Shchedrin version not only triumphs to date on the world scenes, but is also a favorite piece to perform on the concert podium.