When enough is not enough. A bullfight during the opera "Carmen."
Inspired by Jason Heath's "Crazy Gig Stories," (and his recent cartooning) this is a surreal gig story of my own - an oldie, but a goodie.
Back in '93 I was working in Mexico City with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la Ciudad de México, one of the finest orchestras in all of Latin America. Aside from the lung-retching pollution, Mexico City is a really cool and hip place. It remains one of the world's largest cities and at the time over 10,000 musicians of all shapes and flavors were actively working there.
The city supports five full-time orchestras; the public in Mexico City not only supports the Arts, they demand it. The highly imaginative Mexican spirit craves creativity and artistic inspiration on a regular basis.
Never before or since I have witnessed women literally swooning (yes...swooning) at symphony concerts. Never before or since have I had swarms of young people demand my autograph after concerts. It was pretty darn cool.
Saying that you were an orchestra musician in la Filarmónica inspired immediate awe and respect - from the lowliest cab driver to the most highly paid government official.
Some days I actually felt like a rock star.
Walk like an Egyptian
Inspired by productions of Verdi's Aida done "on location" at the Pyramids in Giza, a band of South American producers got the bright idea to stage Bizet's Carmen in a Mexican bullring.
Through my landlord (who was also a music contractor) I was offered to play in the orchestra. It seemed like a fun idea so I agreed to do it. The pay - el pago - was quite good and I was able to fit it into my busy schedule.
Rehearsals went on for several weeks. The producers brought in top singing talent from Europe, Mexico and South America. There were some glitches that in hindsight I should have seen as omens, but otherwise the show was looking pretty good.
The sets and props were impressive, and the production included a gaggle of live animals - horses, sheep, dogs, cats, chickens - adding to the spectacle. The musicians and divas were safely housed on an ingeniously crafted stage built into a portion of the amphitheater seating, so the animals had plenty of room to parade about in the ring below unimpeded by tenors or sopranos.
The performances were set to take place in two locations: in a city north of Mexico City (can't remember the name of the town) and in Mexico City itself, in the largest bullring in all of Mexico.
Bread and circuses
Now, the big caveat here is that right before the Act III climax when Carmen is murdered during a bullfight, the opera was stopped and put on hold.
A complete bullfight - right in front of the orchestra - in all its glamor and pageantry, commenced. When it was over the opera resumed right where it left off, at Carmen's murder scene.
That's right, an actual bullfight in the middle of an opera.
In a jealous rage, Don José stabs the vixen Carmen while her hunky bullfighter boyfriend is off being a bully-bully at the arena. For the producers this seemed like a good excuse to put on a real, honest-to-goodness bullfight. A lip-smacking touch of grand guignol to add to the operatic spectacle; a gladiatorial event to draw the crowds in like flies to ... well ... cow manure.
It worked. The crowds were the largest I have ever seen - in the tens of thousands every night.
Mexico City alone has a population around 20-30 million, so in hindsight these large audience numbers were to be expected for something so unique. At the time, I was floored.
A cheery cherry
Having never seen a bullfight before I was naive and a bit scared, yet excited and curious. The drama unfolds in four basic acts:
- A procession of all the players in the drama. Trumpets blast fanfares and the crowd explodes into cheers of olé!
- A feisty bull is released. It is bred and trained for this event, and it charges into the ring full of piss and vinegar. He is frantic and looking for a fight, or the nearest exit. Little does he know that he will soon be ground into yummy bully burgers - no piss or vinegar, just ketchup and salt.
The crowd cheers. The volume is deafening. A series of picadores on horseback appear. Their duty - besides not getting killed - is to ram a long spear into the mound of muscle on the bull's back, cutting open a large wound. This weakens the bull, forcing it to lower its head. With a brutish hacking and sawing motion, the picador basically fillets the bull's back muscles.
Ouch .... and oh yeah, yuck.
Mind you, I like my steaks medium rare, but the butcher at my local grocery store does this gruesome duty behind closed doors. Not only this, but he hands out my steaks in neat little packages wearing latex gloves and a bib. The delicious meat is delicately wrapped in cellophane on a Styrofoam tray without much fuss or muss...or blood.
During this stage of the bullfight, the well-padded horse and rider get a bellyfull of bovine love and angst. The bull is in a rage and tries his best to gore the horse's soft underparts, sometimes lifting the horse off its feet. Bullfight horses often sustain broken ribs and damage to their internal organs.
As you can imagine, there is lots and lots of blood. Spurred on by its injury, the wounded animal is in an unstoppable Hulk-like fury and occasionally, it shrieks in fear or anger. - Next, a few banderilleros enter. They sprint like crazed ballerinas, arms high in the air, running straight at the bull, jabbing fancifully-decorated, barbed sticks into the open wound.
They gracefully pirouette themselves out of the way in the nick of time, narrowly missing the bull's deadly horns. Sometimes though, the bull gets some bully justice and skewers these little twerps. - Next, the star of the show appears - el matador - with much fanfare and cheer.
The verb matar in Spanish translates as "to kill or murder," so in essence a matador is ... well ... a killer.
He enters the ring solo, armed with a red cape and a long, narrow sword. After many flurries and swishes and swashes and bravado gestures - accompanied by choruses of olé! from the crowd - the moment of truth arrives.
Using his cape, he maneuvers the bull into a position to stab it between the shoulder blades, plunging the sword through to its heart.
The giant animal falls - plop - and ding-dong, the bull is dead.
Boink!
In this Carmen production though, the final moment of truth was often a hit-or-miss affair. On one evening, the matador keeps hitting solid bone and - boink - his sword bends and does not penetrate.
He tries again and again, and - boink - the sword just will not go in. This goes on for a good while.
The disappointment and frustration from the audience begins to rise in a slow crescendo of boos, whistles and hisses. Finally the bull, completely exhausted and running short of precious bodily fluids, gives up and decides to lay down in the dirt.
The matador retreats, and a sidekick - a stooge - comes out with a huge butcher knife ready for business. He executes a hackneyed Jack the Ripper routine on the bull right in front of us, and brings the whole unpleasant ordeal to a brutal end.
Hannibal Lecter would have been proud: "...and I sawed through to his heart while eating some fava beans and drinking a fine chianti....slurp slurp slurp..."
Uhm ... yuckie ... couldn't you do that in a back room like my butcher does?
Lake Eerie
Using ropes and pulleys, a team of men and horses drag the corpse out of the ring to the many cheers and jeers of the crowd. The team leaves it backstage to bleed out - in front of the orchestra pit exit.
The opera continues and we finish the third act.
Carmen dies, the bull dies and everyone is happy. The catharsis is complete. After the show, we pack up our instruments and make our merry exit from the pit - tra lah lah, time to go home! - only to find a huge pool of gooey, semi-congealed bull's blood at our exit.
Mind you, a bull is a large animal and this was a lake of blood. We had no choice but to walk through it in order to get out and go home.
...uhm...double-yuckie... good thing I wore my nice shoes.
Oh but dear reader, I am just getting warmed up. There is much more story to tell.
This was only the first incident in a chain of great misfortune and broken promises. When the production moved to the huge 50,000 seat bullring in Mexico City the drama escalated to climactic reality-show proportions.
Bullfighting generates heated controversy in many areas of the world, including Mexico. Supporters of bullfighting argue that it is a culturally important tradition, while animal rights groups argue that it is nothing but a blood sport because of the suffering of the bull and horses during the bullfight. They vehemently argue that there is no art or culture involved in what is otherwise a ritualized, public slaughtering of an animal.
When the animal rights activists in Mexico City got wind of this Carmen production, they got involved in a big way.
Part II includes:
- animal rights protestors,
- masked professional wrestlers (luchadores),
- verbal shouting matches during the production,
- a matador screaming at the orchestra
- a near riot with jeers of "kill the musicians!!"
- security tackling orchestra members,
- and an infamous conductor in the audience saving our skins.
Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction. You can't make this shit up.
Images and sounds from:
Microsoft Clip Art, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr (bull / idea), and Carmen Electra wallpapers.
Oh, and say hello to my little friends, Adobe Photoshop and Sound Forge.
HORNDOG BLOG is authored by Bruce Hembd
Ha! Bruce, this is outstanding! I can't wait for part 2. I'll definitely be pointing folks to this on my blog. I'd love to make it to Mexico City one of these days. I have a stand partner who used to play in (I'm pretty sure) the orchestra you're mentioning back in the 70s. He still talks about it all the time fondly.
BTW, great cartoons!
May 15, 2008 8:22 PM
Thanks - I love Photoshop!
Definetly wasn't expecting the story to end up where it has so far, good thing I already ate! Looking foward to part 2, Ole!
May 16, 2008 10:18 AM
Pretty funny, and as you say, no one could make this up. I played in Guadalajara for 4 years from 79-83, in addition to a brief stop in the sinfonica nacional in Mex. City, so have an appreciation of these kinds of stories.
May 16, 2008 10:52 AM
Yes - not many cities in the world can boast having five full-time symphony orchestras!