B I Z E T' S   C O L O R F U L   and flamboyant opera Carmen, with its eye-popping portrayal of on-the-street living filled with smoking, fighting, and drinking women, scandalized Parisian audiences when it first premiered in 1874.  Yet this stagework quickly became wildly famous for its music and emotional intensity — becoming one of the most-loved and well-known operas ever written. 

  For this episode of In Focus, Franz Welser-Möst offers a different look at this beloved work through a brilliant arrangement for string orchestra and percussion, created as a ballet score by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin for his dancer wife, prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya.  The intense passions of this famously tune-filled opera are revealed in unexpected detail across thirteen movements, just begging you to dance. 
     

CARMEN-SUITE
Ballet Score based on Bizet's opera Carmen
(freely arranged for string orchestra and percussion) 
by Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932)

Composed:  1967

Scored for:  string orchestra, timpani, and percussion (4 players)    
       Percussion Player 1: marimba, vibraphone, castanets, three cowbells, four bongos, tubular bells, snare drum, guiro
       Percussion Player 2: vibraphone, marimba, snare drum, tambourine, two woodblocks, claves, triangle, guiro
       Percussion Player 3: glockenspiel, crotales, maracas, whip, snare drum, choclo, guiro, three temple blocks, bass drum, tam-tam, snare drum, triangle
       Percussion Player 4: cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, hi-hat, triangle, tambourine, five tom-toms

Duration:  about 45 minutes

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T H I S    U N U S U A  L   arrangement of music from Bizet's Carmen emerged in 1967 from a collaboration between Maya Plisetskaya, prima ballerina of the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet, and the Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonson.  Wanting to present the dramatic storyline of Carmen as a ballet, they approached first Shostakovich and then Khachaturian, neither of whom were keen to be simply arranging Bizet's well-known score for ballet.  So Plisetskaya turned to her husband, Rodion Shchedrin, and he responded enthusiastically with something that proved to be much more than an arrangement.

       His idea was to use Bizet's melodies but to give them a totally new flavor by scoring them with no winds and lots of percussion.  He did not hesitate to score freely for the strings, and to switch registers and even rhythms when he felt inclined.  Sometimes this is done with humor, as for example when part of the melody of the Toreador's song is suddenly missing, or when the soldiers changing the guard in Act I seem to trip up on their own maneuvers.

       The presence of percussion throughout most of the score gives the music a great deal of fresh excitement and color.  Along with one timpanist, Shchedrin calls for four more players, each of whom has an array of different instruments, occasionally borrowing an instrument from the next player, or having two players beating out the exciting bullfight music (best known from the overture) on the same xylophone.  The castanets are here, as they are in the original, but also a woodblock, bongos, cowbells, a guiro, and so on.

       It's a carnival for percussion, and it would be hard to think of any other opera that would survive such treatment so well.

       One of the liveliest movements is not from Carmen at all, it's the Farandole from Bizet's L'Arlésienne suite.  But since Bizet died so soon after the premiere of Carmen, his publishers had no scruple about building up the ballet section in the last act with pieces drawn from other works.  (It is more than likely that Shchedrin used the standard score quite unaware that this movement was not part of the original opera.)

       The part of Micaela, with her wonderfully tender music, was omitted from the ballet, but the critical triangle of Don José-Carmen-Escamillo is preserved.  The ominous "fate" motif recurs at critical points in the action, and a wonderfully dramatic effect is achieved having the Habanera recalled at the end, played on distant bells, just as it had been at the very beginning.

       The ballet was staged at the Bolshoi in 1967, but ran into recurrent objections from the Soviet regime, who attacked it first for indecency (even though the opera had been standard repertoire in the Soviet Union for years), and then for damaging Bizet's authorial integrity.  A ban on its performance was imposed, then lifted only when Shostakovich intervened with the opinion that it was a masterly score and superb ballet music.

       A plan to take it to the Toronto World Expo in 1968 was similarly attacked by the Minister of Culture, Yekaterina Furtseva, on the grounds that Plivetskaya's costume was too scanty. In the event, the dancer became seriously ill, so the tour never happened.  The regime relented, and Carmen-Suite became one of the Bolshoi's most successful ballets both at home and abroad.

       Shchedrin has lived a long life and composed an immense amount of music in all genres.  He successfully negotiated the fall of the Soviet Union (who had widely honored him, in addition to criticizing some of his work) and has continued to garner praise and success since that time.  His wife, Maya Plivetskaya, who inspired the Carmen-Suite, died in 2015.

—program note by Hugh Macdonald © 2021