Oscar Hammerstein II rummaged through Georges Bizet's opera about a gypsy worker in a Spanish cigarette factory who seduces and ruins a soldier who kills her after she runs off with a bullfighter, kept the major musical pieces largely intact, and moved the action to a parachute factory in the American South. The characters are now black, and they speak in a Great White Way version of Ebonics, delivered incongruously in careful stage diction; cries Corporal Joe at the end, "String me high on a tree so dat soon I will be wid my darlin'!" Even before this virtual invitation to a lynching, the show contains enough unconsciously racist touches to make modern audiences squirm. In its time, though, Carmen Jones seemed more positive; it provided Broadway work for a large black cast of classical ability, acting out a familiar story from high opera.

The score itself follows Bizet almost without change. The Prelude leads into the original opera's "Changing of the Guard," a children's chorus rendered as "Lift 'Em Up and Put 'Em Down." Carmen's Habanera becomes a sexy song called "Dat's Love"; her Seguidilla is now "Der's a Café on de Corner (run by my friend Lily Pasta)." Compressing all of Carmen's big numbers into the first act, the next item is the Gypsy Song, now titled "Beat out Dat Rhythm on a Drum"; in the beginning, this takes one of the greatest departures from Bizet, with its bit of African drumming, although soon we settle back into French opera, until the percussive dance sequence at the end.

The Toreador Song, now assigned to a boxer named Husky Miller, is an imaginative transformation called "Stan' up and Fight." (References to love awaiting the victor are replaced with the lyrics "Until you hear dat final bell, stan' up and fight like hell.") The rhythmically tricky quintet, redubbed "Whizzin' Away Along de Track," can be a challenge for a Broadway-oriented cast. The tenor's Flower Song, now "Dis Flower," is delayed until fairly late in the show, and somehow calls to mind Billy's monologue in Carousel. It's followed after intermission by Michaela's aria, here Cindy Lou's yearning song "My Joe." From the opera's fourth act comes the celebratory opening chorus, now dubbed "Dat's Our Man." Joe and Carmen have their final confrontation in a scene that closely follows the conclusion of the opera, definitively moving Carmen Jones from the Broadway stage into the realm of operetta.

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