BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Lust, murder, and revenge? Bring it on. Just make sure you’re not smoking.
For centuries, opera has featured the grizzly and gruesome, the seductive and sinful. But the West Australian Opera has canned its plans for a production of Carmen due to a different concern: cigarette smoking.
Bizet’s sexy heroin Carmen works for a cigarette factory, and concerns that the opera may be seen as glorifying tobacco smoking has led to its cancellation.
The opera company secured a $400,000 two-year partnership with State Government agency Healthway, and made the decision to avoid any conflict with the positive health messages of their sponsor.
WA Opera General Manager Carolyn Chard told 720 ABC Perth that the opera “does present some difficulties if you’re promoting non-smoking and healthy work environments.”
“I think sponsorship is so vitally important to arts companies and this is significant support and you need to deliver benefits,” she told the station.
In further discussions with Radio 6PR, Chard said the decision was made by the company and not under the influence of Healthway.
Healthway Chairperson Rosanna Capolingua did, however, tell Radio 6PR she was impressed by the decision and that “you really have to congratulate them.”
Rest assured, you’re likely to get your fix of Carmen within the next four or five years – after the sponsorship deal has ended.
In the meantime, be sure to think twice before you light up.
Image: Florida Grand Opera’s Carmen, credit to FGO Gaston De Cardenas. [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]
