Bizet's "Carmen" is now probably the world's most popular opera. 19th Century France, however, enjoyed humiliating its most talented sons and "Carmen"s first production at the Paris Opera-Comique, on 3 March 1875, was an abject failure. The first- night audience grew steadily colder as the new opera progressed and by the end of Act 2 had simply ceased to respond. The remainder of the work was received in total silence. The following morning the Parisian press moved in to finish the job. The story of "Carmen" was "obscene", the music "obscure", "devoid of colour", "unoriginal and undistinguished in melody" and the opera as a whole was "altogether undramatic". Bizet's fellow-composer Charles Gounod conceded that "Carmen" had some merits but was at pains to point out that they weren't Bizet's - "Take the Spanish airs and mine out of the score, and there remains nothing to Bizet's credit but the sauce that masks the fish". "Carmen" staggered on for 48 performances to progressively emptier houses and by the end the management of the Opera-Comique was giving the tickets away for free. 19th Century French taste had triumphed again, and it took a production in Vienna that October to launch the opera on the triumphant worldwide career which continues to this day. But by then Bizet was already dead - an attack of quinsy, exacerbated by his depression at the reception of "Carmen", had carried him off on June 3 at the age of 37. Gounod was one of the pallbearers at his funeral.

In the 125 years since then the musical world has fallen over itself to make amends for "Carmen"'s sorry early history. The opera itself has never left the repertoire, and by the second half of the 20th Century had overtaken Gounod's "Faust" as the world's favourite. Musicians of all types have paid their homage to its powerful drama and inexhaustible flow of melody. Brahms, Wagner and Nietzsche were all early admirers; and Tchaikovsky even went so far as to base several of the principal themes of his Fourth Symphony on melodies from "Carmen". Pablo de Sarasate and Franz Waxman have both composed "'Carmen' Fantasies"; Oscar Hammerstein II wrote a new libretto and turned it into the Broadway musical "Carmen Jones", and earlier this year Matthew Bourne's new ballet "The Car Man" opened in the West End using Bizet's music in a 1970's re-orchestration by the Russian composer Rodion Schedrin. "Carmen" has become public property, universal in its appeal, and there are currently over 20 recordings available.

In the pre-recording era, of course, popular music had could only live outside the concert hall or opera house through arrangements - piano duets were the most common, but orchestral suites of edited "highlights" also meant that favourite works could be heard more frequently without the expense of singers or staging. Two orchestral suites from "Carmen" were made by Fritz Hoffman after Bizet's death, and a selection of movements from these will be performed tonight. The Prelude presents the passionate, chromatic "fate" motif which colours so much of the opera's action; in the Aragonaise , taken from the interlude before Act 4, a closely related melody rises and falls over fiery dance rhythms. The tranquil Intermezzo precedes Act 3 and shows Bizet's melodic gift at its most exquisitely simple; Les Dragons d'Alcala is typical of the light-hearted "military" music which often accompanies Don Jose in the first half of the opera - before his ruin has become irreversible. The brilliant march Les Toreadors is the music which opens the entire opera, the bullfighter Escamillo's unforgettable song "Toreador, en garde" forming its second section. Carmen's Act 1 Habanera "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" is equally well known. The Nocturne turns the forsaken Micaela's aria into the sweetest of violin solos, and the suite concludes with the wild Danse Boheme, here a brilliant orchestral showpiece in the most flamboyant Spanish style.

R.G. Bratby, 2000


Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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