Bizet's dazzling suite...: Carmen

by Gwen Herat

To understand this dazzling, exotic suite and how it was scored and brought to life, is amazing. Only through his innate lyrical gift and melodic power, Carmen was born. He displayed the way forward for French opera with a strong inspirational libretto. Carmen remains one of the world's most popular operas demanded at concerts by conductors even today.

Though not particularly written for ballet, choreographers found it irressitable for the stage. Full of contrasting moods in vibrant drama and emotion, Bizet scored it with colour and exciting rhythms, to make Carmen exotic in melodic music.

He worked hard on the score, day and night, to increase the dramatic tension. To achieve this, he had to cut and rewrite sections and revise the famous Habanera 14 times to produce Carmen. In 1908 the first recording of the opera took place. It covered 36 sides of 78 r.p.m. discs, followed by a filming the next year. This led to no more than 14 screen versions.

At this point a very pertinent question arose.

Was Carmen a ballet or a suite?

To complicate it still further, a stage version was adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II under the title Carmen Jones in 1945 which had a spectacular revival. Later, around 1991 many composers wrote works based from the opera and among them were Pablo Sarasate and Franze Waxman for the violin while Ferrucio Busoni and Vladmir Horowitz for the piano followed by two more notable Carmen suites written especially for orchestral music.

Tale behind Carmen

An exotic and dazzling story makes up Carmen both for music as well as ballet and screen.

The dark and bewitching gypsy girl, Carmen seduces an army coropral named Don Jose only to reject him later to be replaced by a matador, Escamilo. This typical Spanish story of dance and music has entranced audiences for over 150 years.

Carmen is the only score that stood out with magnificence for the clumsy Biset who laboured for a length of time to produse this opera mainly among strings. Carmen's sexy dancing at the inn of Lilas Pastia had the Toreador's Song and La Fleur que tu, mainly scored for baritone aria (meaning the flowers you offered me) was how Don Jose declared his love for Carmen.

Carmen was choreographed by clever choreographers from the 1940s the first one being in a five scene ballet by Petit to the music of Bizet in 1949 at Ballet de Paris, Prince's Theatre, London with Petit, Perrault and Hamilton. The ballet follows roughly the plot of Prosper Merimee's story of 1845.

The Royal Danish Ballet mounted it in 1960 under a different title. Other ballet treatment included those by Petipa in Madrid (1845) Goleizovsky Werner and Steinbrenner (1971) in Stuttgart.

I was lucky to see Carmen mounted by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with the dazzling exotic Christine Rice as lead dancer to Bizet's original score, last Summer in London.

George Bizet

Born Alexander-Cesar Leopold though known as George after his godfather, George Bizet was born in Paris to his gifted parents, pianist-mother and singing-instructor father. Child-prodigy, Bizet was admitted to the Paris Conservatoir at the tender age of 10.

There was no doubt about his overflowing talent, he became a brilliant pianist though he never played at a concert. He was such an outstanding student who bagged almost every prize. One among them was the award by Offenbach for opera.

The most important one that thrilled the young Bizet was the Prix de Rome which took him to Italy for three years. At 17, he composed Symphony C that was rated as the most exciting event of his life.

While in Rome, he scored the works that were expected from him and returned to Paris to build his career. With many attempts to score an outstanding one, he finally came up with Carmen that exploded in musical history of opera. He put his heart and soul, days and nights, joy and sorrow and everything conceivable into it.

This was followed by The Pearl Fishers (1863). It was composer Berlioz who first identified the virtuosity of the score that was set on the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during earlier times.

The duet of tenor and baritone from Act 1 captioned ‘Au Fond Du Temple Saint (in the depths of the temple) where two fishermen Nadir and Zurga recall the love that both had bestowed on the same beautiful girl.

This is very significant to all Sri Lankans that the score had our island as the background from which this magnificent classic rose and to make it still more super and iconic, the Listeners to Classic FM and BBC Radio 2 have voted this score as their first favourite piece of classical music, especially in the historic recording by Jessi Bjorling and Robert Merril.

Piano duets

However, my favourite even above Carmen, is a score he did in 1871, titled Jelux D'Enfants that contains 12 piano duets. They sound innocent and intriguing but conclude with the famous Galop.

For the first-timer or one without any familiarity over classical music that is associated with the works of Early Romantics, Bizet is such a person. His work revolve more around his sense of humour (and temper) and lively energy.

He sounds difficult and at times, coarse or derivative; more because the critics were unfair by his Carmen that later led him to an untimely death when he was barely 37 years, with a heart attack.

Bizet was born to an era when two or three main elements of music, namely; melody and rhythm in the process of being codified and the concept of harmony being introduced and a difficult time for the voice as opera was just stirring.

The Romantics were symphonic with concerto forms mature. Development of Romantic opera and the age of the piano virtuso were taking charge. Establishment of Lieder and an art form extended to the beginning of nationalism.

And George Bizet embraced them all when the call came early from above.