Successful Kickstarter campaign brings adaptation of Bizet’s CARMEN to life, featuring Tenor and Director Alek Shrader, Legendary Artist P. Craig Russell,
Artist Aneke, and Award-winning Letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
PHOENIX (October 18, 2022) – After a successful spring Kickstarter campaign in which Arizona Opera more than doubled its campaign funding goal of $20,000, thanks to 829 backers, the opera company is thrilled to announce it will be publishing, CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, for release in time for the holiday season. The 112-page hardcover graphic novel will be available in early December for consumers nationwide via Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores and comic shops, and is currently available for pre-order through Amazon for $35.
Clover Press, an eclectic, San Diego-based publisher of comics and art books, will publish CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, adapted as a graphic novel by tenor, director, and writer Alek Shrader, with layout and page design by legendary artist P. Craig Russell (Neil Gaiman’s American Gods), illustrations by the acclaimed artist Aneke Murillenem (Bylines in Blood), and lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
“It is a thrill for Arizona Opera to share the work of this remarkable team of artists through the graphic novel format and the timeless story of Carmen,” said Joseph Specter, Arizona Opera’s President and General Director.” Specter continued, “Throughout the pandemic, our company constantly pursued novel approaches to connecting people through opera, when people need art and meaning the most. CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL represents an amazing opportunity to extend that focus on innovation, impact, and community.”
CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL is the passion project of writer Alek Shrader, an operatic tenor and director, well known for his appearance in The Audition, a documentary about the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, now known as the Laffont Competition. For his first graphic novel, Shrader collaborated with the New York Times bestselling illustrator P. Craig Russell, who is renowned both for his graphic novel adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s novels, and his acclaimed adaptations of opera, including Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle. For CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, P. Craig Russell provides the layouts, which are finished, illustrated, and colored by Aneke, who has drawn comics for DC Comics and Marvel.
The development of CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL originated through Arizona Opera’s OnPitch Business Challenge, created in association with ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the W. P. Carey School of Business and Arizona Opera’s Funding Innovations Task Force. Funding for OnPitch was made possible by an Innovation Grant from OPERA America, through the generous support of the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. OPERA America’s Innovation Grants support exceptional projects that have the capacity to improve the vibrancy of opera in the field’s most important areas of practice, with a focus on empowering organizations to increase their investment in experimentation and innovation and contribute to field-wide learning. CARMEN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL was a massively successful campaign on Kickstarter, which was fully funded in fewer than three days and doubled its goal over the course of the campaign.
“This project first came to our attention on Kickstarter,” said Clover Press Publisher Hank Kanalz. “I’m a big fan of P. Craig Russell’s work and have his previous opera adaptations. So, what started as a purchase for my private collection became a publishing partnership with Arizona Opera for the book itself.”
Perhaps the most famous opera in history, Georges Bizet’s Carmen premiered in 1875 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. The four-act opera, featuring a libretto written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy and adapted from the novella by Prosper Mérimée, remains one of the most exciting and popular works in the repertoire. And now, nearly 150 years later, the story of Carmen has been adapted again, this time through a beautiful, graphic novel.
About the Creators
Alek Shrader (writer) is an opera singer and director, best known for his appearance in THE AUDITION, a documentary about the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He has been performing and directing professionally since 2004. He is a lifelong comic book fan, and a writer. This is his first opera adaptation.
P. Craig Russell (layout artist) is an Eisner and Harvey award-winning comics artist, writer, and illustrator. His expansive body of work ranges from DC’s Detective Comics, Marvel’s Doctor Strange, and Dark Horse’s Hellboy, to his own adaptations of Kipling’s Jungle Book Stories and The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde. He has created several adaptations of classical music and opera, including Mozart’s Magic Flute, R. Strauss’s Salome, and Wagner’s Ring cycle. He is a frequent collaborator with Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, American Gods, Norse Mythology) and Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy).
Aneke (penciller, inker, colorist) is a Spanish illustrator whose work has appeared in both DC Comics and Marvel publications including Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Suicide Squad, and VALERIA Age Of Conan. Her credits also include Vampirella, Red Sonja, Battlestar Galactica 1880 for Dynamite Entertainment as well as Judge Anderson and Venus Bluegenes for 2000AD, among many other projects. She is an enthusiast of music, cinema, art, science, and, of course, a lover of comics!
Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou is a British/Algerian letterer, who has worked on comics like, Time Before Time, What’s the Furthest Place From Here?, and Red Sonja. He’s also the editor of the Eisner-winning PanelxPanel magazine and voice behind Strip Panel Naked.
About Arizona Opera
Arizona Opera, which recently celebrated its 50th Anniversary, produces fully-staged operas, concerts, and collaborative programs throughout the state of Arizona each season, and is among only a handful of companies in the U.S. that regularly performs in more than one city. Arizona Opera elevates the transformative power of storytelling through music, cultivating community, and strengthening a state and people as adventurous and diverse as the place they call home. Since its inaugural year in 1971, Arizona Opera has produced more than 200 fully-staged operas and concerts. The company’s artistic history is rich with a blend of opera’s repertoire featuring baroque, bel canto, and verismo works, turn-of-the-century masterpieces, operettas, and contemporary opera, including multiple world premiere commissions.
About Clover Press
Headed by IDW co-founders Ted Adams and Robbie Robbins, along with Matt Ruzicka and Hank Kanalz, Clover Press publishes a wide variety of collected and original content ranging from re-mastered reprints of Terry and the Pirates, horror graphic novels, and high-quality art books. Clover Press is working with a wide variety of creators including Kevin Eastman, Craig & Clizia Yoe, Dean Mullaney, Steve Niles, Gabriel Rodriguez, Ruben Bolling, Matt Bors, Timothy Truman, Ricardo Delgado, Richard Bennett, Ray Troll, John K. Snyder III, Stewart Kenneth Moore, Aron Wiesenfeld, and more.
About Carmen
Set in Seville around the year 1830, the opera deals with the love and jealousy of Don José, who is lured away from his duty as a soldier and his beloved Micaëla by the Roma factory-girl Carmen, whom he allows to escape from custody. He is later persuaded to join the smugglers with whom Carmen is associated, but is driven wild by jealousy. This comes to a head when Carmen makes clear her preference for the bullfighter Escamillo. The last act, outside the bullring in Seville, brings Escamillo to the arena, accompanied by Carmen, there stabbed to death by Don José, who has been awaiting her arrival.
