The Theater: New Musical in Manhattan, Dec. 13, 1943

Carmen Jones (music by Georges Bizet; book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; produced by Billy Rose) turns the opera that Sir Thomas Beecham once called "the sturdiest oak in the operatic forest" into the most brilliant show on Broadway. If Bizet's Carmen and the all-Negro Carmen Jones live, artistically, on different sides of the railroad tracks, they nevertheless represent the shortest distance between one exciting kind of job and another. Drastic changes have been made. Carmen has been retired in a kiln, not warmed over in an oven. There is no capricious...

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