Conscripting Carmen as Cinematic and Dance Propaganda for the Spanish Civil War in Germany and the United States of America

Abstract Georges Bizet’s Carmen has always been a political opera, even beyond its fundamentally exoticist premise. Soviet adaptations, such as the Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio’s Carmencita and the Soldier (1924), were integral to this process, which was further heightened during the 1930s. During the Spanish Civil War, elements of Carmen—that enduring stereotype and internationally recognizable symbol of Spain—were recast in works that could serve as propaganda in support of different sides in the conflagration. This chapter considers adaptations of the Carmen story and elements of the opera in Nazi Germany and New Deal United States. This will include more detailed consideration of the Nationalist Spanish films Carmen la de Triana/Andalusische Nächte (1938) and the Ruth Page and Bentley Stone ballet Guns and Castanets (1939), and their different musical and narrative strategies in the political mobilization of Carmen.