Carmen Jones--film on DVD

What an attractive cast. Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte must be two of the sexiest people ever to be on film, and they are together and at the height of their appeal in Otto Preminger's film version of Carmen Jones, which uses the general story and music from Bizet's opera Carmen in a new setting with new lyrics and dialogue by Oscar Hammerstein II.

While Dandridge and Belafonte are both singers, we hear neither of their singing voices in this film, due to the extreme vocal ranges for Carmen's and Joe's roles. A young Marilyn Horne supplies the vocals for Carmen. Knowing Ms. Horne's voice well from her storied opera career, it is interesting to hear her morph her sound to make it fit Dandridge's physicality. The voice is completely unrecognizable as Horne's, but sounds very much as if it could be Dandridge's. Whomever sings for Belafonte is less successful.

I love the music of Bizet's Carmen, which forms the basis of this score, although I've never seen it in an opera house. I did see the Peter Brook version that played at Lincoln Center in the 80s. It was a bit of a cross between the opera and a theatre piece, although I don't recall much of it other than it was the first time I had seen fire live on stage, and the iconic tableau of Don Jose squeezing the orange into Carmen's mouth.

According to the broadway database, there has not been a Broadway remount of this show since the 1940s. A lot of the dialogue and lyrics seem dated and stereotypical by today's standards, but I wonder if this show would work in a concert setting? Everytime I heard Pearl Bailey speak or sing, I kept imagining Queen Latifah. Audra McDonald could certainly sing Carmen. I don't know about the role of Joe, but how about Brian Stokes Mitchell singing Husky Miller (who sings the Toreodor song)?

Carmen Jones
Music by Georges Bizet
Lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II
Film directed and produced by Otto Preminger
Released in 1954
Cast: Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Joe Adams