# Jamie Barton Stirs It Up Interview: Sings Carmen With S. Blythe As Don Jose



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/02/mezzo-soprano-jamie-barton-interview-erica-jeal
Below is a review of the Carmen performance with Stephanie Blythe as tenor Don Jose. 
https://chicagoontheaisle.com/2021/...en-the-other-in-russet-beard-is-yup-don-jose/


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

D


Seattleoperafan said:


> https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/02/mezzo-soprano-jamie-barton-interview-erica-jeal
> Below is a review of the Carmen performance with Stephanie Blythe as tenor Don Jose.
> https://chicagoontheaisle.com/2021/...en-the-other-in-russet-beard-is-yup-don-jose/


Curioser and curioser.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I think it best to maintain a discreet silence, at least for now.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

mmmmmmm hmmmmmmmm!


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

What is next Seattleoperafan :
Jakub Józef Orliński singing Gilda :lol:


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Rogerx said:


> What is next Seattleoperafan :
> Jakub Józef Orliński singing Gilda :lol:


Personally I would like him to sing a part as a MAN!!!! What a MAN he is LOL Handsomest man in opera today perhaps??????


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Okay, I'll bite.


> I've been saying for so long: 'Can I please do an Orfeo where it's a lesbian love story? Can we do a Don Carlo where Eboli or Rodrigo are queer?


What bothers me about this is not the idea of doing a lesbian or queer love story. It's that she seems to think, like a lot of people (especially online) today, that making those changes is in and of itself doing something artistic. I think opera right now would be extremely receptive to a new opera that had a lesbian love story, but where is the Gluck to write us the _music_? In Hades, perhaps. An ideological way of understanding music has killed off modern classical music to the point where it's hard to get people to go and see new works because they're, well... bad. So they take an old opera, make changes, and present a now incoherent work with irrelevant (to _Orfeo_) themes superimposed on it and people go see it because they either find it to be a Very Important Event or because they want to hear Gluck's music. That might make for a more diverse story (and that only superficially, because the words and music, and hence the character, don't change, only the person singing them), but it doesn't make for _good art_. And LGBTQ people deserve to have real art made about their lives and struggles.



> the messages I got from people, saying, 'I never thought that I would see a body like mine playing a role like that,' or, 'I never thought I as a non-binary or a trans person would see something that showcased a non-normative voice.' We were touching people in a real way, an important way, and you can do that with the classics


I sympathize with the people who sent her those messages, and I don't want to totally dismiss what she's doing. But can you imagine how many more people it might touch if there were a good, new opera with powerful music that embodied these themes and stories? Forcing these issues into the classics doesn't make them diverse, it makes them incoherent, and it says what she's basically saying, which is that the classics are not classics. A classic is a work that is always relevant. Wagner does not need to be made relevant to today. He is relevant, which directors inadvertently acknowledge when they blight his work with their "interpretations": they know full well nobody would ever go to see their crap if they didn't hang it on Wagner's music, because his music is relevant to people today, all people. Contemporary art seems to me to believe that art is only relevant to people "as a", meaning "as" whatever intersectional social identity categories apply to them. I don't agree with that. It can be a starting point, but I think it diminishes our humanity to reduce our possibilities of artistic expression in that way.



> I'm not going to say that I'm never going to sing them again, but I've spent a lot of years doing roles where I'm the third person in a love triangle, which is always perpetuated by the man, and the lead soprano almost always has to kill herself in order to be 'redeemed', and those are stories that are 1,000% created by the patriarchy, and I'm not interested in them any more.


Again, she has a point here. There are many operas that have stock characters that embody the ideas about gender prevalent at the time. But the more interesting works do not _merely_ embody those notions. Brunnhilde may contain elements of 19th century German notions about femininity, but she's not reducible to them, and she certainly doesn't sacrifice herself to the patriarchy -- if anything she transcends and destroys it. And honestly, I don't see how what she's proposing to do is much different than what she's critiquing. Opera will now be loaded up with 21st century notions of gender, which will undoubtedly be obsolete in 200 years and make the art of today irrelevant then. What's the point? Probably, given her next quote, politics, but that's not art.

I have a belief in art that is neither "for art's sake" nor "for politics' sake". Stereotyping is bad art not because it is offensive or politically incorrect (great art is frequently both those things), but because it's a lie, and art's job is to embody truth. So I'm with Barton in this: we need great art about a more diverse set of characters. But I don't see what she's calling for leading to that. I see it leading to a lot of self-congratulatory virtue signaling that will further enervate our already moribund performance tradition.

My main issue with Barton though is that I just don't really care for her singing.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

vivalagentenuova said:


> Okay, I'll bite.
> 
> What bothers me about this is not the idea of doing a lesbian or queer love story. It's that she seems to think, like a lot of people (especially online) today, that making those changes is in and of itself doing something artistic. I think opera right now would be extremely receptive to a new opera that had a lesbian love story, but where is the Gluck to write us the _music_? In Hades, perhaps. An ideological way of understanding music has killed off modern classical music to the point where it's hard to get people to go and see new works because they're, well... bad. So they take an old opera, make changes, and present a now incoherent work with irrelevant (to _Orfeo_) themes superimposed on it and people go see it because they either find it to be a Very Important Event or because they want to hear Gluck's music. That might make for a more diverse story (and that only superficially, because the words and music, and hence the character, don't change, only the person singing them), but it doesn't make for _good art_. And LGBTQ people deserve to have real art made about their lives and struggles.
> 
> ...


Beautifully written. I don't myself see it as a lesbian love story anymore than I would with Sutherland and Horne in Semiramide. I have heard Blythe sing tenor and it is very convincing... jaw droppingly so. Her voice really dropped an octave and she was wearing a beard, so there was no pretense at being a woman. You I'm sure haven't seen Blythe as her male drag character and she sounds and looks like a guy. It was her way to make her new lower voice relevant. Thanks for chiming it. I always love reading what you write.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

^^^^ You know, if this encourages women and non-binary singers to start singing in their chest voices again, it could actually be quite useful. Blythe has some way to go in developing hers, but young singers might start wanting to sing M'appari and actually develop their chest notes. We talked about Ruby Helder in another thread. I would be happy to see someone who could sing like her in a number of tenor roles:


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