Carmen Suite (after Bizet)

Maya Plisetskaya wanted a Carmen ballet and asked Shostakovich, then Khachaturian; both declined. Her husband, Rodion Shchedrin, wrote the Carmen Suite in 1967 in about twenty days, scoring Bizet's material for strings and forty-seven percussion instruments and reordering it to follow the ballet's dramaturgy rather than the opera's. The premiere at the Bolshoi on 20 April 1967 was attended by the Minister of Culture, who called the result a travesty of a classic; the ballet was withdrawn and then restored. The percussion does not decorate Bizet — it replaces wind and brass entirely, and changes what the music means.