The True Story of Carmen: A Klezmer Parody

Big Galute is a klezmer band, but it's more than a klezmer band.

Big Galute roams the entire vast and exciting musical world of klezmer music, Yiddish theater music, Sephardic music from Spain, Levantine music from the eastern Mediterranean, and the works of Jewish classical music composers. 

They are five musicians with backgrounds in klezmer music, classical music, jazz and blues, early music. They sing, play the clarinet, and the violin and viola, and instruments of the lute and guitar families, accordion, percussion, and bass.

And they also tell jokes and perform original comic songs and parodies. Today we'll share one of their parodies of the opera Carmen. Georges Bizet's opera takes place in Spain, but the Big Galute troupe has inside information to prove that the original location was really a shtetl, and how Carmen ended up in Spain is another story.

As the troupe performs their version of the Habanera, we learn that

That's right folks, Carmen was from the shtetl.

A shayne maydel who wouldn't settle.

Not any Tevye or Dov or Hershel would do for her.

She was too commercial.

We hope you enjoy the parody.

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO IS NOT VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)