I am watching a DVD of Carmen, in a production by the Antonio Gades company. (Gades is not in it, since it is his company, but after his death.) Most of Bizet's music disappears, ceding to flamenco guitar. It is more Mérimée than Bizet, then; it is a ballet, not an opera.
What I thought was interesting was putting Lorca's "Romance sonámbulo" in this work. The "verde que te quiero verde" motif appears at more than one moment.
Gades was a protegé of Pilar López Júlvez, who is the younger sister of Encarnación (Encarna, "La Argentinita."). I'm sure Pilar instilled in him a good degree of Lorquismo. Bodas de sangre is one of the things that Gades is best known for, in the Saura film version.
The Gades company also has a version of Aynadamar, by Golijov, added to the repertory after Gades's death.
I'm kind of coming to a thesis about the ubiquity of musical homages to Lorca. They feel almost compulsory. I still haven't seen the Fuenteovejuna DVD that came with the set I purchased. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some Lorca smuggled in there too.
Now I realized I hadn't heard Carmen [the opera] all the way through, so I have to listen to that too. Of course it is all recognizable, but I don't really know the opera as a whole.
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