Last week my husband and I went to the opera to see Carmen. We saw the opera at the beautiful Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Before the performance, an opera expert gave the background of the story and the characters.
Carmen was written by Georges Bizet, and premiered in Paris in 1875. Here’s the basic story, as described by Wikipedia:
The story is set in Seville, Spain, around 1820, and concerns the eponymous Carmen, a beautiful gypsy with a fiery temper. Free with her love, she woos the corporal Don José, an inexperienced soldier. Their relationship leads to his rejection of his former love, mutiny against his superior, and joining a gang of smugglers. His jealousy when she turns from him to the bullfighter Escamillo leads him to murder Carmen.
In his presentation, the opera expert explained that Carmen was a complex character, apparently based on one of Bizet’s lovers. She was seductive, headstrong, flirtatious, demanding, temperamental, argumentative, quickly became bored of her lovers and wasn’t terribly concerned about predictions that she would die.
“Gee,” I said to my husband. “She sounds like a sociopath.”
After watching the entire opera, it sure seems to me that this character is, in fact, a sociopath. Here’s the famous aria from the first act, called The Habanera. To set the scene, Carmen flirts with all the men in the village, and they all want to be her lover. She has everyone captivated, everyone except the soldier Don José. He, then, becomes a challenge.
Habanera from Carmen, performed in Covent Garden in 2006.
As the story progresses, Carmen gets in trouble and is sentenced to prison. Don José is supposed to guard her, but she seduces him. Don José forsakes his sweet village girlfriend, falls in love with Carmen and lets her escape, ending up in trouble himself. Then he throws his entire military career away and joins Carmen’s band of gypsies. Carmen, however, gets bored of Don José; she falls in love with a bullfighter and flaunts it. Don José tries everything to get Carmen to return, from pleading to threats. Carmen knows the former soldier is on edge, but throwing caution to the wind, she taunts him with her love of the bullfighter. Don José flies into a rage and kills her.
The story was right out of the sociopath playbook: Over the top love bombing, followed by devalue and discard. Don José tries desperately to recapture the original euphoria, but failing, he becomes somewhat sociopathic himself—like some abused partners do—and lashes out.
Othello
A few months ago, I saw another classic drama with a sociopathic theme—Shakespeare’s Othello. This is a tragedy of love, deception and death, written in 1603. Othello is a Moorish general in the Venetian army, married to Desdemona. Iago, Othello’s trusted ensign, is angry because the general has promoted a younger lieutenant above him, and he hatches a plot to play people off each other so he can get what he wants. Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia:
Although eponymously titled, suggesting that the tragedy belongs primarily to Othello, Iago plays an important role in the plot he reflects the archetypal villain, and has the biggest share of the dialogue. In Othello, it is Iago who manipulates all other characters at will, controlling their movements and trapping them in an intricate net of lies. He achieves this by getting close to all characters and playing on their weaknesses while they refer to him as “honest” Iago, thus furthering his control over the characters.
The Shakespearean dialog is admittedly a bit difficult for our modern ears to understand, but with good acting we can see what is going on. Iago actually talks directly to the audience and reveals his intentions. You can see it here:
Iago’s monologue in the 1995 film Othello.
As a result of Iago’s plot, many of the characters in Othello end up dead.
Don Giovanni
Another opera that I saw (my husband likes opera) was Don Giovanni. This opera was written by Mozart and premiered in 1787. However, it is based on the legend of Don Juan. Yes, that Don Juan—the guy who went around seducing women for the fun of it.
The original legend dates back a play published in Spain around 1630. Here’s how Don Juan is explained in Wikipedia:
Don Juan is a rogue and a libertine who takes great pleasure in seducing women (mainly virgins) and enjoys fighting their men. Later, in a graveyard, Don Juan encounters a statue of Don Gonzalo, the dead father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ana de Ulloa, and impiously invites the father to dine with him; the statue gladly accepts.
In the first act of Mozart’s version, Don Giovanni first tries to seduce a woman, Donna Anna. Her father shows up and Don Giovanni kills him, then escapes with his servant, Leporello. They come across another woman, Donna Elvira, who is upset because her lover has abandoned her and she wants revenge. And who was the cad? Don Giovanni. He makes a quick exit, and tells Leporello to tell Donna Elvira the truth about his character.
Leporello does, in a famous aria called Madamina, il catalogo e questo. He tells Donna Elvira about all the women Don Giovanni has loved—640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey, but in Spain, 1,003. Watch how Donna Elvira reacts to the news—it will seem familiar to many of us who were involved with cheating sociopaths.
Moral of the story
So why am I writing about opera and Shakespeare? To point out that sociopaths have been with us forever. I’m sure the playwrights, librettists and composers who created these characters were drawing from people they knew in real life. Watching these characters, we can all see reflections of what we experienced. The characters may have seemed unbelievable and outlandish to many audiences, but we know that the behaviors are real.
The only problem I saw with these particular stories was that in each one of them, justice was served. Carmen was killed, Iago was arrested and Don Giovanni was turned into stone. In the real world, as we know, that doesn’t always happen.
Other spath stories:
– Dangerous Liaisons: two spaths have a bet over whom to seduce: a virgin to help revenge the other spath’s ex lover who wishes to marry the virgin, and a virtuous wife who resists the lovebombing for a long time, until she gives in, leaves her husband and is ditched like a vile rag. She dies broken hearted. One spath has an epiphany during a duel, sees the light and discovers he loves one woman (and I hold very high scepticism for the end). The other spath is exposed by the dying spath, and ends up literally losing her face.
– Usual Suspects: a whole crew and gang have been killed at a burned boat. There is one man who gets away from it without a scratch: a cripple and conman who gets immunity for his witness account. Police think an ex corrupt policeman was involved and used it as cover up to turn out dead, but still lives. So they interview the cripple. But there is one other survivor, a burn victim, who claims it was the infamous and allusive Keiser Soze behind it all. The cripple can finally go, only for to the cop to realize he has been lied to from the first word to the last (watch a spath lie and do his pity play). A witness drawing is made of Keiser Soze and faxed… Keiser Soze walks away from the police station, losing his gimp along the way.
– The tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte: a woman runs away with her boy and takes residence at Wildfell Hall. A farmer falls in love with her, and manages to make her trust him insofar she reveals in a diary what her past is. Married young to a libertine who lovebombds her, but once married the relationship becomes abusive, chaotic, full of empty promises and lies and cheating. He’s not alone. He has a whole set of friends who care nothing about her, her son, nor their husbands and wives. Not until he keeps her from raising her son and starts to corrup him with his ideas of what a man ought to be, does she decide to run. But the farmer finds she has returned to her husband, who has been taken gravely ill for his excessive drinking. He eventually dies, and she’s free to marry her farmer.
– Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy: Tess is raised in a poor family, but the drunken father believes they have some important ancestor related to a noble family, and they send Tess to this family to do the work of a maid in the hope they wish to help far cousins. Alec the son of the family and her ‘cousin’ helps her to her working position, tries to seduce her, and though she hopes to stay out of his schemes, the non-worldy girl ends up being raped. She learns the family are not the infamous relations. The noble family had died out, and the rich (but not noble) family bought the name. She returns to her parents, pregnant, the shame of town and delivers her stillborn child. In the hope to find a society where she can live without the scandal, she works as a dairymaid someplace else, and falls in love with ‘Angel’. They marry, but upon their wedding night Tess finally reveals her past, just as he confesses his ‘sins’. Tess can forgive him, but Angel thought she was still pure and cannot forgive her. He leaves for America. Without anyone to turn to, the destitute Tess wanders into Alec’s web once more. Alec wanders the country as a fiery preacher, meanwhile looking for Tess everywhere. When he finds her he convinces her to live with him again. Angel finally sees the error of his ways and returns in search of his wife, only to discover she lives with Alec as his mistress. Still he wants to rescue her, but comes upon her right after she murdered Alec with scissors. Tess gets hanged for her murder. Angel ends up marryng Tess’s younger sister.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen – Mr. Wickham is the spath here, who uses the dislike of Mr. Darcy by the village to smearcampaign him. He’s a soldier and first is Elizabeth Bennet’s favourite, believing him instantly, because she dislikes Mr. Darcy for his pride. She even forgives Mr. Wickham when he transfers his affections from her to a young woman MRs. King who is to inherit a lot of money. But Mrs. King’s uncle manages to get her away from Mr. Wickham. Meanwhile after she rejects a marriage proposal from Mr. Darcy she finds out the true story behind Mr. Wickham: a gambler with loose morals who did not want to be a clergyman and was financially compensated to go into another profession, who hoped to elope with Mr. Darcy’s 15 year old sister. Just as her view on both men reverses, her narcistic younger sister elopes with Mr. Wickham, ruining the chances of herself and her beloved sister Jane of making a good match. But Mr. Darcy who knows the connections Mr. Wickham might use comes to the rescue to make Elizabeth’s sister marry Mr. Wickham and helps him to a soldier commission up north. Elizabeth and Jane marry their beaus. Mr. Wickham will remain as he is, and her sister forever doomed to beg them for money.
– Theseus in the Minotaur myth could be spathic for his empty promises. Ariande, his enemy’s daughter helps him with a thread to kill the minotaur and find his way out again out of the maze, because she loves him at first sight. In return he promises to take her with him to Athens and marry her. He actually takes Ariadne and her sister Phaedra aboard. But he leaves Ariadne behind on an island after sleeping with her, where she curses him. So full of himself, Theseus also forgets his promise to his father Aegeus to hoist the white sail if he returns alive. His father jumps to his death when he sees the black sail, naming the sea at Athens as Aegean Sea. Theseus marries Phaedra. But before that he is one of Helen’s initial abductors when Helen is still a young child for his mother to raise her. This abduction later causes the other Greek men to promise to each other they will wage war to anyone who ever abducts her again. As a punishment, Theseus gets trapped in the underworld at some point, and becomes stonelike. He gets forgiven, only to abduct Hypolytta, an Amazon queen, who goes with him to Athens and gives him a son Hyppolyte. When he later takes Phaedra for his wife, she kills herself and is revenged in a way, when Phaedra falls madly in love with Hypolyte, who is a pure young man and refuses her. She accuses him of rape, making Theseus kill his own son, and she commits suicide over it. But Theseus remains a hero… oen could argue that Ancient Greek was quite a spathic society to begin with: women were but tools to get offspring and who were isolated and locked away, totally meaningless for Greek society in any other way.
Those are some of the movies, books and myths the past months where I thought…. hmmm, very spathic characters.
Darwin’s mom,
There is a thread here about spaths in the movies….you might enjoy that.
Most of the Greek and Roman mythology and much of the fairy tales of the British, and other myths and early stories are about the S-pathic behavior of some character and how they victimize someone who is innocent, or someone who gets sucked into doing something they otherwise wouldn’t have done. I think they have been with us since we lived in caves and dressed in skins.
Actor’s get paid to lie, to pretend to be someone they aren’t. Early in our relationship the xbf told me that so and so had told him he would make a great actor. It’s no wonder all the hollywood trash go through marriages like I go through a loaf of bread.
Good point, Hens….I think being a “good actor” may require a bit of narcissism as well as the ability to “lie well.”
Great article Donna. That is one I can relate to since I am into the arts a lot and I never really thought about the spaths in opera. I gotta say though that Carmen was very fun for me to sing though-because she is so unlike me. My friends and family would be amused when I did Habanera because they look at who I am and how Carmen is totally not like me at all. It’s kind of fun for us performers to do characters that they wouldn’t relate to in real life. Carmen was actually very challenging for me at first because my voice teacher told me that I needed to pretend to be the slut and I don’t even know how to flirt.
SK CONGRATULATIONS!!
‘This is what inspired me to change all my contact information today. For good. There is NO HOPE HERE.’
OXy, you mentioned that thread before, and I searched for it, but couldn’t find it…. Any help is appreciated!
Phantom of the opera……
And…..
ANNIE….
🙂
I LOVE the music from Phantom….
I remember Spath went out with a visiting friend…..he stayed out all night and NEVER came home.
(after me being up all night waiting for him and worrying about his safety)….he strolls in at 8am.
I was soooo pissed…..and when the kids got up, we had a morning of culture and dancing on the wood floors…..we put on hard heeled shoes and CRANKED Phantom…..over and over and over as we danced and sang away right above the bedroom where spath went right to bed.
🙂
Still Crank Phantom and sing at the top of my lungs! (Alone these days….) 🙂
I do agree wholeheartedly with the article, Donna. Psychopaths have been with us since the dawn of humanity. And a number of storytellers—novelists, playwrights and others—have been sufficiently perceptive to draw authentic and detailed character portraits of these miscreants in their artistic creations.
The only trouble I have is that it’s hard for me to enter into a serious discussion of Carmen without dissolving spontaneously into laughter. That’s because I can never think of the opera without remembering the infamous “program notes” in English (of a sort) allegedly handed out at a performance of the work by the Genoa Opera Company in 1981. They read as follows:
—————————————-
ACT ONE: Carmen, a cigarmakeress from a tobago factory loves Don Jose of the mounting guard. Carmen takes a flower from her corsets and lances it to Don Jose. (Duet: “Talk me of my mother.”) There was noise inside the tobago factory and revolting cigarmakeresses burst onto the stage. Carmen is arrested and Don Jose is ordered to mounting guard on her but she subduces him and lets her escape.
ACT TWO: The Tavern. Carmen sings (Aria: “The sistrums tinkling.”) Enter two smugglers (“Ho, we have in mind a business.”) Enter Escamillio, a Balls fighter. Carmen refuses to penetrate because Don Jose has liberated her from prison. He just now arrives. (Aria: “Slop here who comes.”) But here are the bugles singing his retreat. Don Jose will leave and draws his sword. Called by Carmen’s shrieks the two smugglers interfere with her. Jose is bound to dessert. Final Chorus: “Opening Sky Wandering Life.”
ACT THREE: A rocky landscape. Smugglers chatter. Carmen sees her death in the cards. Don Jose makes a date with her for the next Balls fight.
ACT FOUR: A Place in Seville. Procession of Ball-fighters. The roaring of Balls is heard in the arena. Escamillio enters (Aria and chorus: “Toreador, Toreador, All hail the Balls of a toreador.”) Enter Don Jose (Aria: “I besmooch you.”) Carmen repels him. She wants to join with Escamillio now chaired by the crowd. Don Jose stabbs her. (Aria: “Oh, rupture, rupture.”) He sings: “Oh, my subductive Carmen.”