Bizet banned

The news that a forthcoming production of Bizet’s Carmen has been dropped by the State Opera of Western Australia because the story is set in a cigarette factory, and therefore conflicts with local anti-smoking rulings, seems to denote the start of a new phase in the world’s smoking restrictions.

Would it not be enough simply to ban smoking on the stage of the theatre during the performance? Seemingly not. The opera company has issued a statement to the effect that it cares about the health and well-being of its staff, performers, and audiences, “which means promoting health messages and not portraying any activities that  could be seen to promote unhealthy behaviour.”

But can it really be said that Carmen does that? I would be inclined to think not. Carmen, after all, is one of the operatic world’s long-established anti-heroines. The question that surely does arise is what next? Will Wolf-Ferrari’s delightful comedy Susanna’s Secret be banned because its heroine is a private smoker?

And will all those famous black-and-white movies of the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties vanish from the screen because they portray smoking as something seductive and sophisticated?

Will it mean the loss of all those memorable films of Humphrey Bogart (who admittedly died of cancer of the oesophagus), Dick Powell, Lauren Bacall, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Bette Davis, and Jack Nicholson, to name just a few?  Buy your DVDs now, even if, like me, you have not smoked for forty years and no not intend to restart.
8 October 2014