"L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" — a descending chromatic warning that love obeys no law (1875)
The Habanera, adapted from Sebastián Yradier's song El Arreglito
Recording: Unknown · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · French opera
Carmen
3 March 1875, Opéra-Comique, Paris
Georges Bizet · libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, after Mérimée
A cigarette-factory worker in Seville seduces a corporal, drags him into desertion and smuggling, tires of him, takes up with a bullfighter, and is stabbed by the corporal outside the arena as the crowd cheers within. The first-night audience was scandalised; Bizet died three months later believing it a failure, and it became the most performed opera in the world.
How to spot them
- ▸Seville around 1820 — a guard-house square, Lillas Pastia's tavern, a mountain pass, the bullring
- ▸Mezzo-soprano title role, tenor soldier, baritone bullfighter, soprano village sweetheart
- ▸An opéra comique with spoken dialogue, later fitted with sung recitatives by another hand
- ▸A fate motif on the cor anglais, first heard at the very end of the prelude
- ▸Cards that always fall the same way, and a flower thrown across a square
Arias & moments — listen
"Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre" — a bullfighter returns the soldiers' toast (1875)
Escamillo's entrance in Act 2, the opera's most quoted tune
Recording: Georges Bizet / Damrosch Orchestra · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Les tringles des sistres tintaient" — a gypsy song that accelerates to a frenzy in a tavern (1875)
The Chanson bohème opening Act 2
Recording: Bizet · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Près des remparts de Séville" — sung with hands tied, to persuade a corporal to let a prisoner escape (1875)
The Seguidilla, Act 1
"La fleur que tu m'avais jetée" — a soldier has kept a flower through his weeks in prison (1875)
The Flower Song, Don José's Act 2 aria
"En vain pour éviter" — the cards turn up death, and turn up death again (1875)
The Card Scene in Act 3
A prelude that ends not in festivity but on a jagged fate motif (1875)
The Act 1 prelude, quoting the bullring march and then the fate theme
Recording: Musopen · CC0, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •The libretto is based on Prosper Mérimée's 1845 novella of the same name.
- •Bizet died on 3 June 1875, aged 36, exactly three months after the premiere and after only 33 performances.
- •The recitatives used in many grand-opera productions were written after Bizet's death by his friend Ernest Guiraud; the original has spoken dialogue.
- •Célestine Galli-Marié created the title role; the Opéra-Comique management feared a stabbing on stage would ruin a house that catered to family audiences.
- •The Habanera is a reworking of 'El Arreglito' by the Basque composer Sebastián Yradier, which Bizet had taken for a folk song.
- •Nietzsche championed Carmen as an antidote to Wagner in The Case of Wagner (1888).
- •Bizet also wrote two Carmen-free hits — the L'Arlésienne suites and the Symphony in C — and the duet 'Au fond du temple saint' from Les pêcheurs de perles.
- •Spin-offs include Hammerstein's Carmen Jones (1943), Carlos Saura's flamenco film (1983) and Bizet-Shchedrin's Carmen Suite for strings and percussion.
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Bizet, Georges: Carmen
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Carmen
- Mina Curtiss — Bizet and His World