World Premiere: March 3, 1875 (as part of the full opera)

Most Recent HSO Performance: February 9, 2013

Instrumentation: 2 flutes with both flutes doubling on piccolo, 2 oboes with second oboe doubling on English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, snare drum, castanets, cymbals, bass drum, tambourine and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass

Duration: 25'

Selections from Carmen (1872-1875)

Georges Bizet

(Born October 25, 1838 in Paris Died June 3, 1875 in Bougival, near Paris)

Carmen, Prosper Mérimée’s earthy novella of 1845, was an unlikely subject for Georges Bizet to have chosen for representation at the Opéra-Comique, whose bourgeois works had accustomed the theater’s audiences to lighthearted, happy-ending stories disposed in breezy musical numbers separated by spoken dialogue. Heroism, tragedy and recitative were reserved for the hallowed environs of the Paris Opéra. Even though Bizet and his librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, smoothed the edges of the story and the characters (Carmen was little more than a raw prostitute in Mérimée’s novella), critics and audience were bemused by the tragic progression of its plot, the depth of its characterization, the lubriciousness of its emotions, and the cumulative power of its impact at the opera’s premiere on March 3, 1875. Though Carmen did not initially achieve the success Bizet had hoped, neither was it the fiasco that some legends later made of it. It was retained in the Opéra-Comique repertory and given 35 times before the end of the 1875 season and thirteen the next, though Bizet died in Paris exactly three months after the premiere, knowing little of the opera’s success. Carmen then was produced to much acclaim across Europe and in America (first at New York’s Academy of Music on October 23, 1878), and by the time it was revived at the Opéra-Comique, in 1883, the original spoken dialogue had been replaced with composed recitatives by the New Orleans-born composer Ernest Guiraud. Carmen was invariably performed in that through-composed version until Bizet’s original score again came to light in the 1960s.

The selections on this concert begin with the ominous Prelude to Act I, which serves as the gateway to the fiery and tragic tale that follows. The Aragonaise (Entr’acte to Act IV), brilliant and languorous by turns, sets the scene for the opera’s searing conclusion. The Intermezzo (Entr’acte to Act III) provides a quiet, lyrical foil to the surrounding events. In the seductive Seguidilla (Act I), Carmen lures Don José to a local tavern. The Dragoons of Alcala (Entr’acte to Act II) is the marching music that precedes Don José’s arrival among the Gypsies. In the Habanera (Act I), which Bizet based on a popular song by the Spanish composer Sebastián de Yradier, Carmen sings of the fickleness of her love. The Nocturne is Micaëla’s aria in Act III in which she implores Don José to return home to his dying mother. The Song of the Toreador (Act II) is the swaggering melody of the haughty bullfighter Escamillo. The Danse Bohême (Act II) is the fiery music marking Carmen’s return to her Gypsy band after fleeing from Seville.

©2021 Dr. Richard E. Rodda