Wilks, Jennifer M. - Carmen in Diaspora

Focuses on adaptations set in African diasporic contexts
• Explores a wide range of sources, including archival materials, performance ethnographies, and scholarly works
• Examines an especially wide variety of case studies (opera, literature, film, musical theatre) and linguistic (French, English, Wolof, Xhosa, Spanish)

Carmen in Diaspora is a cultural history of Carmen adaptations set in African diasporic contexts. Beginning with Prosper Merimee's novella and Georges Bizet's opera and continuing through twentieth- and twentieth-first century interpretations in literature, film, and musical theatre, the book explores how opera's most famous character has exceeded the 19th-century French context in which she was created and taken on a life of her own. Through this transformation, the Carmen figure has sparked important conversations not only about French culture and canonical opera but also about Black womanhood, community, and self-determination.