After having produced Losey’s Don Giovanni (1979) and Syberberg’s Parsifal (1982), the managing director of Gaumont, Daniel Toscan du Plantier, proposed a film version of Bizet’s Carmen to Francesco Rosi. According to Toscan du Plantier, “the opera-film could only come about if there was a strong between the cineaste and the chosen opera. And I use the term cineaste to distinguish the operation from that of a theatrical director who steps behind the camera for the sake of the project. […] This underlying idea established the basic principles of the project: the quality of the actors and their physical suitability for the roles, and the need to forget about the stage and think in images”. Once he overcome an initial reticence due to his lack of familiarity with opera, Rosi quickly became enthused by the project – “I think that Carmen is the most cinematic of operas”. He soon recognised a rapport with Bizet who “conceived of the love between a man and a woman in exactly the same way as I do: a love between two beings who are, and who inevitably remain, adversaries.
He wanted to make “a visual interpretation, not only of the libretto, but also of the music”, so that “each note corresponds to a precise image that imposes itself on the spectator” thanks to the plasticity and chromatic scheme of Pasqualino De Santis’ cinematography.
Bizet also made use of the medium of dance, since he realised that “for the Andalusians and gypsies, gestures and dance are a privileged form of expression” (and Carmen is a gypsy). So, with the help of Antonio Gades, Rosi privileges choreography, but locates it within the authenticity of natural sounds and the airy Spanish locations (in Ronda, Carmona and Seville). Rosi asked the orchestral director Lorin Maazel to record the singers separately, on different tracks, to retain the possibility of underlining or varying particular moments of the music during the mixing. One of the most original aspects of Rosi’s Carmen is the variety of registers: “the liberty with which Bizet operated, mixing ‘operetta’ and tragedy, is the thing that most fascinated me and convinced me to do the film”.

Roberto Chiesi