The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (56 page)

Bizet himself recognized the relative weakness of Act III.

In performance

Few productions have succeeded in suggesting the oriental setting without descending into cardboard kitsch, but it is impossible to update or change the setting.
One ingenious solution, adopted by Nicolas Joel in Chicago, was to present the action within the frame of a Victorian gentleman’s club.
Two of its members recline on divans and smoke hookahs, and the opera then unfolds like their opium dream.

Recording

CD: Henri Legay (Nadir); André Cluytens (cond.).
EMI 565 266 2

Carmen

Four acts. First performed Paris, 1875.

Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy

Adapted from a superb short story by Prosper Mérimée,
Carmen
was considered shockingly obscene when it was first performed and Bizet tragically died three months later under the impression that the opera had failed.
Within a few years, however, it had swept the world, even winning the admiration of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who favourably compared its ‘light feet’ and Mediterranean qualities to Wagner’s decadent Teutonic gloom and pretension.

Plot

The timid village girl Micaëla arrives in Seville with a letter from the mother of a young corporal, Don José, who is stationed outside a cigarette factory.
José thinks that he loves Micaëla, until one of the factory girls, a gypsy called Carmen, flirtatiously throws a red flower at his feet and captivates him with her sexual allure.
Later, Carmen is arrested after a brawl in the factory.
When she is put under José’s guard, he besottedly allows her to escape, thus earning himself time in jail and loss of rank.

A month or so later, in Lillas Pastia’s low dive of a tavern, Carmen consorts with her friends Frasquita and Mercédès and some officers.
Escamillo, a glamorous toreador, appears.
He is attracted to Carmen, but she is still intrigued by José, who has just been released from prison.
After Escamillo leaves, José enters the tavern and he confesses to Carmen that he is infatuated with her.
Carmen taunts him seductively and
he ignores the trumpet recalling him to barracks.
Instead, he decides to become an outlaw, joining up with Carmen and a group of smugglers.

In the smugglers’ mountain lair, Carmen’s relationship with José is soon breaking up, and she sees her impending death in the cards.
A frightened Micaëla appears in search of José with news that his mother is dying.
Escamillo fights José over Carmen.
She sides with Escamillo, and accepts his invitation to a bullfight.
José remains determined to win Carmen back.

Outside the bullring, crowds hail Escamillo, who is accompanied by Carmen.
Her friends warn that the enraged José is pursuing her, but she fatalistically stays her ground.
Inside the bullring, Escamillo triumphs as José confronts Carmen and begs for her love.
When she refuses, he kills her and gives himself up to the authorities.

What to listen for

Familiarity with its marvellous tunes blinds us to the genius with which
Carmen
has been put together.
It is a hugely original and influential work which combines the traditions of
opéra-comique
– the quintet in Act II and the smugglers, for example – with a stark emotional realism which is quite new to opera and which becomes most vivid in the duel of a duet between Carmen and Don José in Act IV.
The scoring is brilliant (particularly in relation to the wind section), the flow of melody ceaseless and, despite some muddle in Act III, the cumulative dramatic impact enthralling – no wonder
Carmen
has been so widely and consistently popular.

The title role was originally written for the small, light voice of Célestine Galli-Marié, but today the tendency is to seek out bigger, fruitier mezzo-sopranos who end up blasting their way through the Habanera and Seguedilla at the cost of all its seductiveness and subtlety, even if they can let themselves go impressively in the no-holds-barred final scene.
Because the role does not lie particularly low, it is also possible for sopranos – Emma Calvé, Maria Callas and
Victoria de los Angeles among them – to sing the role
successfully.
The same is true of Don José, evidently intended for a light tenor but now the province of meatier singers, like Placido Domingo, who need to cut the high-lying Act I duet with Micaëla and ignore the instruction to end the Flower Song with a B flat pianissimo.
Micaëla is a deceptive role: the character may be all girlish innocence in contrast to Carmen’s sexual knowingness, but her aria in Act III demands a rich and womanly lyric soprano; Escamillo is graced with the thumping hit of the Toreador’s song, but basses find the role lies too high and baritones find it lies too low, and nobody has ever made his macho strutting anything but faintly ridiculous.

In performance

In an effort to leave behind tapas-bar, picture-postcard views of southern Spain, directors have adopted various twentieth-century proletarian settings – the Spanish Civil War and the banana republics being prevalent.
Other clichés of
Carmen
productions include the image of the bullring, the flamenco troupe and a figure representing
duende
or Fate.

Several versions have more radically adapted or cannibalized the opera: Oscar Hammerstein, for example, located the plot in a black American environment for a musical comedy version,
Carmen
Jones;
while in
La
tragédie
de
Carmen,
the director Peter Brook stripped the piece back and used the music to illustrate something closer to Mérimée’s original and the realities of gypsy life.

There are some minor textual problems: until the 1970s,
Carmen
was regularly performed in a version with sung recitative (composed by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet’s death) in place of the original spoken dialogue.
Since the publication of Fritz Oeser’s scholarly edition of the score in 1964, the dialogue has been generally restored, though scholars argue over Oeser’s inclusion of passages of music (notably in Act III) which Bizet had himself discarded in his edition of the vocal score.

Outstanding Carmens of recent years – all mezzo-sopranos – include Teresa Berganza, Agnes Baltsa, Maria Ewing and Denyce Graves.

Recordings

CD: Victoria de los Angeles (Carmen); Thomas Beecham (cond.).
EMI 5 67357 2

Video: Maria Ewing (Carmen); Bernard Haitink (cond.), Glyndebourne production.
Warner 4509 9949 4

DVD: Agnes Baltsa (Carmen); James Levine (cond.).
Met production.
DG 073 000 9

Camille Saint-Saëns

(1835–1921)

Samson et Dalila

Three acts. First performed Weimar, 1877.

Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire

Originally classified as an oratorio because of its biblical subject (based on the story in the Book of Judges),
Samson
et
Dalila
is invariably regarded today as a banquet of a grand opera with all the spectacular trimmings.

Plot

The Hebrews are held captive by the Philistines in Gaza.
Their leader Samson leads them in prayer.
When Abimelech, the Philistine governor, mocks the God of Israel, Samson kills him.
The High Priest of Dagon curses Samson and enlists the Philistine maiden Dalila to seduce him.
Despite warnings, Samson submits to her dazzling charms.