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Raquel Meller as Carmen © Cinémathèque française

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Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989) Mark Fitz-Gerald Music for the silent film Mark Fitz-Gerald studied in London at the Royal College of Music, where his professors included Norman Del Mar, winning all the major prizes for both orchestral and operatic Carmen (1926) conducting. It was during this time that Henze invited him to This track list utilizes the composer’s own movement Andalusia take part in the first Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in titles in the few places where he indicated them on the Montepulciano, as a result of which he was invited regularly autograph score. The bold geographical headings and 4 “En Andalousie”. Triste et mystérieuse 6:28 to Switzerland as Guest Conductor of the Basel Sinfonietta. the descriptions in italics, derived partly from the main The smugglers’ camp in the mountains – Carmen is From 1983 to 1987 he was Artistic Director of the RIAS intertitles of the film and partly from the narrative of bullied by García, her ‘rom’ (‘gypsy husband’) into Jugendorchester (West Berlin) where his innovative Prosper Mérimée’s novella Carmen, are intended to help infiltrating the tobacco factory in Seville as a worker Filmharmonic Concerts received much acclaim and were later the listener to relate the music on this recording to the made available on CD. He returned there to continue the film action. Since the film lasts nearly three hours, Seville series with the Berlin Rundfunkorchester in 1992. Since then whereas Halffter’s music has a duration of he has performed the very specialised task of accompanying approximately sixty minutes, and not all the sections 5 “Real Fabrica de Tabacos” (Seville) 11:24 silent films live with orchestra, with much success in many have a specific designation in the context of the film, a Changing of the guard – Midday break for the factory countries and festivals throughout the world. Described as certain element of conjecture has been necessary in girls – The girls at prayer in the chapel – The factory “one of the indispensable Shostakovich interpreters of our relating the music to the film action. fight – Carmen is led away through the streets under time”, he has performed the Trauberg/Shostakovich classic guard of Don José – Carmen’s escape – Don José New Babylon (1929) to great critical acclaim, in particular at condemned to prison the Japanese première of the work (opening concert of the The village of Elizondo (Northern Navarre) 6 Mystérieux, calme 0:49 Tokyo Summer Festival in 2000) and the Rotterdam Gergiev Don José in his prison cell Festival 2001. With the help of Mrs Irina Shostakovich and 1 Animé 1:26 7 Mystérieux 0:48 Krzystof Meyer he has restored the complete score to another Don José Lizzarrabengoa runs to his mother’s house, The smugglers’ camp in the mountains – Attack by the Trauberg/Shostakovich film, Odna (1929), and conducted pursued by the authorities. customs’ guards from Malaga – Arrest and the world première (the first Shostakovich première for over 2 Modéré (Sombre) 4:27 imprisonment of García – Demotion and release of twenty years) in Holland and later in Paris, with enormous Confession: ‘J’ai tué un homme.’ (I have killed a Don José – Outside the Colonel’s house in Seville – success. He conducted the United Kingdom première at the Barbican centre in 2006 and his restoration is now man) – Flashback Arrival of Carmen to entertain the officers published in the new complete edition of the composer’s works. His critically acclaimed recording of Odna 8 Très retenu 1:29 (8.570316) was followed by a no less successful recording of Shostakovich’s The Girlfriends and other previously Don José journeys south through Castille to Carmen flirts with Don José – An officer beckons her unrecorded works (8.572138). His accompaniment of the 1927 silent film ‘Wings’ with Carl Davis’ score at the Andalusia back into the house 2010 Pordenone Festival was so successful that it led to an immediate re-invitation by the Festival’s director, 9 “Danse de Carmen”. Moderato non troppo. David Robinson. In 1986 he was appointed Music Director of Kentish Opera, with whom he has conducted many 3 “La Vieille Castille”. Animé. 1:26 Pesante 2:31 successful productions. He has assisted regularly at the Vienna Staatsoper, as well as the Vienna Kammeroper. In At a tavern Don José meets an officer who recruits Carmen dances for the officers’ pleasure 1992 he made his début at the Vienna Volksoper with The Cunning Little Vixen, and in 1994 conducted the world him into the army 0 Pesante (mais en mesure) 3:48 première of an opera by the Mexican composer Victor Razgado at Spoleto in conjunction with the Italian producer Evening: Don José and Carmen alone on the city wall Luca Ronconi. In 1994 he conducted The Nutcracker for the Vienna Festival Ballet. His career has brought guest ! “Soledad”. Allegretto. 1:12 engagements with orchestras throughout Europe and in Japan. From 1989 to 1993 he was Associate Conductor of Don José searches for Carmen in the streets and bars the Orquesta Classica do Porto, Portugal. He was Assistant Conductor in Strasbourg both at the Philharmonic at night Orchestra and at the Opéra du Rhin from 1997 to 2002. His début with the London Philharmonic Orchestra is scheduled for 2012.

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Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra Tarifa Ronda

@ % Photo: Anna Meuer and Tim Wegner “La route de la côte vers Tarifa” 5:11 “Paso Doble”. Brillante 1:36 Carmen travels by coach to Tarifa to make The bullfight at Ronda arrangements for García’s escape – Don José deserts ^ Mystérieux, calme 1:50 the army and joins the smugglers – García escapes Having been fatally gored, Lucas is carried into the from prison chapel # A l’aube. Très lointain 1:34 & “Mort de Carmen”. Calme 8:01 The soldiers ambush the smugglers Don José and Carmen ride into a deserted forest – He pleads with her to stay with him – She looks away and Gaucin – Ronda throws his ring to the ground – Don José stabs Carmen – Don José returns to the guardhouse in $ Triste et mystérieuse 12:57 Gaucin and turns himself in. Village of Gaucin: Don José in hiding – Carmen sees a poster offering a reward for his capture – She meets Lucas the bullfighter – She reads his palm – He flirts with her – Lucas invites her to the bullfight at Ronda – Carmen returns to the safe house – Don José beats her violently – On Sunday she leaves for the bullring – The bullring – Lucas prays in the chapel

Founded more than 80 years ago, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (hr-Sinfonieorchester), Germany’s third oldest radio orchestra, is among the leading and most versatile European orchestras today. With its broad repertoire, an impressive number of CDs and a wide range of concerts each year, the orchestra and its Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi have established an outstanding international reputation on renowned international stages including London (the Proms), Amsterdam (the Concertgebouw), Vienna, Salzburg, Paris, Budapest and Prague, and as far afield as Following enquiries of BILD-KUNST, the collecting society providing copyright protection for artists, photographers and Japan and China. Following a line of succession of great conductors including Hans Rosbaud, Dean Dixon, Eliahu graphic designers in Germany, and of the Cinémathèque française, Paris, copyright holders in the film, Naxos has been unable Inbal and Hugh Wolff, Estonian Paavo Järvi has been Chief Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra to ascertain ownership of the copyright in Curt Wolfram Kiesslich’s poster for the 1926 Berlin screening of Jacques Feyder’s since 2006, enriching it through his work with new and exciting repertoire in all styles and from all periods. This Carmen. The poster has been made available to Naxos courtesy of the Cinémathèque française. includes the boundary-crossing Music Discovery Project, participation in the Sir Georg Solti International Conductors’ Competition and numerous children and youth projects.

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Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989) Conductor’s note Music for the silent film Carmen (1926) The published full score of Halffter’s Carmen seems to Ambiguities and inconsistencies are almost endless as Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989), born in Madrid to a family vocal work. He also made a number of arrangements be the work of several copyists, in the very distinctive each copyist seems to have had to hurriedly interpret of German origin, began composing at the age of for orchestra of compositions by Salazar, Falla, 1920s house style of the composer’s publisher Max the original sources in various ways. Individual lines thirteen with his first notated work for piano, Mompou and Granados. However, his most significant Eschig (Paris). Many works are familiar to us in this often have blank bars and in one section only a skeleton Crepúsculos. His piano teacher, Francisco Ember, gave international reputation was achieved by his painstaking beautiful writing, including those of Halffter’s teacher score of main lines is to be found. There are even some a performance of this work, attracting the interest of and somewhat controversial completion over many and mentor Manuel de Falla. parts copied onto the wrong line. Dynamics as well as Adolfo Salazar (1890-1958), one of Spain’s foremost years of Manuel de Falla’s choral masterpiece Atlántida. The score remained untouched and unplayed since accidentals are frequently missing or muddled. The harp music critics. Salazar sent the score of Halffter’s string Halffter’s score for Carmen, hitherto neglected and its première at the Théâtre Marivaux, Paris in 1926 until line is a special case as the composer follows his trio, Homenajes (1922), to Manuel de Falla, who began forgotten, is an epic achievement. The composer, in an it was unearthed about ten years ago by François Porcile teacher’s practice of putting a general pedalling teaching the young composer and introduced him to the interview with Raoul Ploquin in 1926, comments that he (music consultant to François Truffaut on a number of indication for each section without adding the relevant Parisian publishing company of Max Eschig. Thus ‘used old regional themes and Andalusian rhythms, his films). accidentals to the text. However with close scrutiny of Ernesto Halffter’s meteoric career began early and was whose local colour is obvious even to the uninitiated’. It contains only a handful of general indications as the various parallel passages the composer’s highly celebrated by the award of first prize in the Spanish Though he regarded this composition as ‘no more than to how the music should synchronise with the film. sophisticated intentions now seem to be very clear. National Prize for Composition of 1925 for his an accompaniment’ to the film itself, the quality of the Porcile made a brave attempt at putting the score in order, Carmen is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, cor orchestral piece, Sinfonietta. music is such that the work can be enjoyed as a and also added a good number of reprises in order to try anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, double bassoon, 4 horns, The eminent Spanish musicologist, Tomás Marco, magnificent ‘suite’ in its own right, presenting Spanish to match it with the film. However, for live performances, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 5 percussion, has described Halffter as ‘representative of the scenes in impressionistic colours of great originality and such as those I conducted at the Komische Oper Berlin celesta, harp, piano and strings. However, what Generation of ‘27’. This cultural grouping took its intensity. in February 2007 and in Frankfurt in November 2008, compromises the young 21 year old composer had to inspiration from the tercentenary in 1927 of the death of Within the score, Halffter inserts occasional brief much more work was needed. Occasionally the composer endure as he conducted the work’s première can only be the poet, Luis de Góngora (1561-1627). The movement, allusions to various masterpieces of his era. Thus the has given us too much music, but mostly not enough. guessed at. The 50 players Halffter was given, with in its musical context, emphasised the virtues of astute listener may discern affectionate fleeting The most extreme case is the bullfight scene which lasts probably no more than 20 for the string section which is impressionism and neo-classicist tendencies and references to Debussy, Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla, and at least ten minutes and includes a Paso doble which permanently divided in ten and often more parts, would followed the guiding nationalist expressiveness of Falla, Ravel, all such references being absorbed within the lasts barely a minute and a half! not have been enough to cover all the lines of the music! as well as a use of traditional tonality and an avoidance breadth of Halffter’s own inspired inventiveness. The musical text presents a whole host of other We are delighted, therefore, to present this highly of the avant-garde Schoenbergian experimentation. The opening 1, Animé, begins explosively with an problems, no doubt caused by the enormous and highly inspired music, realizing its author’s full musical Other contemporary composers of similar approach adroit use of percussion, though this mood gives way to complex score having to be produced at great speed and intentions for the first time. included Bacarisse, Bautista, Ernesto Halffter’s brother a characteristically Spanish melody with subtle pressure to be in time for the première. Rodolfo, Mompou, Pittaluga, Rodrigo, and Salazar castanets. The next movement 2, Modéré (Sombre), Mark Fitz-Gerald himself. features a plaintive oboe refrain, moving on to Thus, only a year after the triumph of Sinfonietta, touchingly rhapsodic themes, both nostalgic and Halffter was given the opportunity to write the film score expressive, and concluding a more subdued episode with for Carmen, the first of a dozen such commissions for sinister overtones. the cinema ranging between 1926 and 1971. That the Old Castille 3 brings in rhythms accentuated by composer was only twenty-one at the time adds to the castanets, leading on to evocations of Castille and interest of this work. snatches of folk songs. The scene then changes 4 to the It is true to say that Halffter thereafter was a prolific smugglers’ camp in the mountains of Andalusia, Triste composer, for he continued to write a quantity of music et mystérieuse. Following a woodwind introduction over for the Madrid stage as well as many orchestral, chamber muted strings, an atmosphere of intimidation is created and instrumental pieces, and a considerable output of as Carmen is persuaded through blows and arm twisting

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in Bologna in July 2001, and screened on the French TV score for the libretto, a masterpiece in the repertoire, from her smuggler husband to take up employment at stately dance of ironic dignity and lively rhythms. channel Arte in June 2002. Further screenings, with live whose popularity has never damaged its quality. More the tobacco factory. Steadily the tension increases, The dawn is evoked plaintively #, the music orchestral accompaniment conducted by Mark Fitz- than anyone, I am full of admiration for that Carmen. occasional angular dissonances punctuating the smooth becoming more expansive as a flute melody sings with Gerald, took place at the Komische Oper Berlin in But it is also true that if Bizet’s music brilliantly fabric of the music. bird-like lyricism. February 2007 and at the hr-Sendesaal, Frankfurt on 28 illustrates the rather bland drama imagined by the The action shifts 5 to outside the Royal Tobacco In $, Triste et mystérieuse, a richly extended November 2008. librettists, it does not take its inspiration from Mérimée’s Factory of Seville. A march in six eight time is heard, melange of themes and textures is explored. work, whose bitter drama, whose fierce realism, are not before giving way to a quintessentially Andalusian A thoughtful, slightly melancholic melody begins. Phil Powrie really expressed musically in the brilliant and melody and a powerful rhythmic pulse. The overall A second motif increases the tension, while a third sentimental themes of the great French composer. clarity grows in complexity featuring a kind of parody aspect grows passionately romantic. The episode Professor of Cinema at the University of Surrey, and co-author of the original march with a distinctly unmilitary ending. develops in pace and density. Finally, murmuring strings of Carmen on Screen: An Annotated Filmography and – So Jacques Feyder’s film is a visual transposition of The scene of Don José in his cell 6 opens as dark suggest the hushed sanctity of the chapel. Bibliography (Boydell and Brewer, 2006), and Carmen on Mérimée’s drama, an astonishing transposition, thoughts crowd in on the prisoner, with poignant echoes Halffter’s version of the Paso doble % is a virtuosic Film: A Cultural History (Indiana University Press, 2007). powerful, poignantly realist, sensual and full of local and nostalgic longing. example of orchestration packed with delightful melodic colour… The smugglers’ camp in the mountains 7 is and rhythmic effects. But in ^, Mystérieux, calme, the characterized by a brief wandering theme marked music presents the other side of the bullfight, the The score for Carmen: – Yes, that’s precisely why you couldn’t possibly adapt Mystérieux. This contrasts 8, where Carmen’s flirtation suffering and the pain. A poignant flute expresses the ten minutes with Ernesto Halffter Escriche Bizet’s music for this film, as it would have run counter with Don José, evoked by a romantic theme is swiftly grief of the stricken bullfighter’s fate. to Feyder’s intentions. followed by a playful minuet. Having been invited into The final and most powerful stages of the drama Ernesto Halffter Escriche is Manuel de Falla’s favourite the barracks, Carmen dances for the officers 9. conclude &, the impassioned tone being charged with disciple, and is set one day to become Spain’s national – And how did you conceive your accompaniment, this With Don José and Carmen alone on the city wall, contradictory feelings of love and jealousy. Theme composer. He has already contributed more than just new Carmen modelled on the rhythms of the film 0, a number of moods are expressed, the quasi-military builds upon theme in succession, with resonances from hope and promise to the musical heritage of his country. Carmen? contrasted against the lyrical romanticism of the love previous episodes. Towards the climax the music swells There is an astonishingly precocious talent at work in the motif. in volume though from time to time more tender admirable ‘Preludios romanticos’ [1924]. – I used old regional themes, Andalusian themes, whose As Don José searches for Carmen in the streets and moments are perceived. local colour is obvious even to the uninitiated. I followed bars at night !. a little dance is played, the bassoon A steady crescendo raises the temperature, lifting – I’m told that you are preparing an original score the film’s rhythm and atmosphere step by step, ensuring establishing the rhythm, with intimations of strummed the action towards its inevitable calamitous outcome. inspired by the film Carmen? that the intensity of the musical drama did not swamp the guitars resonating from the ensemble. This climactic intensity then subsides into sadness and on-screen drama, because you must never forget that An optimistic flute theme begins ‘The route from regret, a tragic flute theme finally encapsulating the pity – That’s right. Alexander Kamenka, the director of the music must be no more than an accompaniment. I the coast towards Tarifa’ @. But soon other moods of it, though ending in a positive resolution. Albatros Films, asked me to compose a score to found that Feyder is a sensitive and intelligent artist. emerge, more cacophonous, with intermingled sounds accompany the projection of a film by Jacques Feyder. We collaborated very closely, and I hope that the score clashing together. A third extended element is heard You know as well as I do that there are enormous will be worthy of the work which inspired it. with triumphant trumpet, the music evolving into a Graham Wade differences between Mérimée’s novella, Carmen, and the opéra comique of the same name. The novella was Raoul Ploquin, Comœdia, 26 September 1926 not much more than a pretext for the opera, and nothing, or next to nothing of Mérimée’s atmosphere was retained English translation from the French by Phil Powrie in Meilhac and Halévy’s libretto. Bizet wrote a wonderful

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Synopsis Tobacco Factory). Carmen has joined the workforce at And yet, the film’s studio sequences are often Of course, the film was not always accompanied by the factory where the girls are having their midday complex as well as technically brilliant. One of the most Halffter’s music; as was often the case with films in the Synopsis of the film action, with reference to the break. They pray in the chapel before continuing their extraordinary is that of Carmen’s escape from Don José silent period, accompanists would improvise, using well- individual movements of the score as recorded on this work. They go back to work and a fight starts up with in the winding Rue du Serpent. It is a very complex set, known anthology pieces, and might well have preferred album. Although this recording presents the complete Carmen. The Manageress breaks up the fight in horror lovingly designed by Meerson, who had visited Spain Bizet to others, given the opera’s high profile. But for score music, it excludes the numerous reprises and and calls the guards. Don José is mesmerised by seeing and had come back with extensive drawings of those who were fortunate enough to have heard the score repeated sections which are necessary to accompany the Carmen at close quarters. Carmen is arrested and led architectural features he had seen there. These show at the film’s première in the Salle Marivaux on the 5 film. It is not known exactly how Halffter used his music away through the streets under guard of Don José. particular attention to ornate sculptural details, such as November 1926, the music might well have come as a to accompany the film at its première at the Théâtre Carmen tries to bribe Don José into letting her escape the wrought ironwork of balconies and window-grilles, surprise. As one of France’s main reviewers, Raoul Marivaux, Paris on 5 November 1926. with a piece of bar lachi stone, which is said to make all or arches, which are the most defined features in his Ploquin, pointed out after attending the première, The descriptions shown in square brackets refer to girls fall in love with a man! Carmen escapes! Don José hasty sketches of buildings; attention to this kind of Halffter’s music was more sombre than Bizet’s, tragic the film action that occurs between the tracks in our is summoned to his superior officer and is sent to prison. authentic detail is a feature of the sequence. But the even, echoing the more fatalistic streak of the novella so interpretation of the film accompaniment. sequence is extraordinary for a second reason: the as to ‘recreate the fiercely romantic and brutally 6 Don José alone in his prison cell. technically brilliant camerawork for the time. There are passionate atmosphere which Bizet’s music had The village of Elizondo (Northern Navarre) 45 shots lasting almost three minutes, most of which are completely toned down’. He might well have been 7 The smugglers have taken refuge at a ruined tavern in travelling shots, with the camera hopping from a referring to Carmen’s dance for don José’s commanding 1 Don José Lizzarrabengoa runs to his mother’s house, the mountains. Customs guards from Malaga attack the backwards travelling shot in front of the group to a officer 9, with its heavy rhythms closer to Stravinsky’s pursued by the authorities. smugglers’ camp, arresting García, who is escorted to the forward travelling shot as it follows the group. Its Rite of Spring than to the sinuous Habanera of Bizet. prison at Tarifa. Meanwhile, Don José has been released technical brilliance was pointed out by Meller in her This, when added to the documentary style of much of 2 Inside his mother’s house he confesses to killing a from prison and demoted to guard duty outside the memoirs of the film, who saw it as ‘head and shoulders the film, suggests an authenticity far removed from man during a quarrel at a game of Basque pelota and colonel’s house. Carmen arrives to entertain the officers. above the most audacious recreations made in France Bizet’s ‘opera tinsel’, as the American reviewer quoted decides to escape the authorities. until then’. above put it. It explains why one of the major film 8 Carmen sneaks out to flirt with Don José. An officer The combination of authentic location shooting and magazines of the time, La Cinématographie française, Don José journeys south through Castille beckons her back into the house as Don José looks on technically brilliant sets made this one of the most listed a number of sequences worthy of note, only to to Andalusia with jealousy. fascinating Carmen films of the silent period. Halffter’s conclude that ‘you would have to list them all; the film original music adds to this complexity; his interview is perfection itself’. 3 At a tavern he meets an officer, a fellow Navarrais, 9 Carmen dances for the officers’ pleasure. with Ploquin underlines the difference between a certain who recruits him into the army. intensity and rawness quite at odds with what he The film since 1926 0 [Early the the following morning Don José goes to considered to be Bizet’s sentimentality. Audiences 4 The smugglers’ camp in the mountains. We are find Lillas Pastia’s tavern to wait for Carmen. She finally would have recognized Manuel de Falla, and even more Carmen premièred in Paris in November 1926 (at 3000 introduced to García dit ‘Le Borgne’, Carmen’s (one- arrives and discusses the contraband with Lillas Pastia]. the Ravel of Daphnis and Chloé (1912), already hugely metres). It was restored by the Cinémathèque française eyed) ‘rom’ (her ‘gypsy husband’) and to the smugglers’ Don José and Carmen go out alone to the city wall in popular in this period, in the rich textures of the finale. in 1985 (3408 metres), work that was mainly the sinister leader Le Dancaïre. García bullies her with Seville as long shadows spread over the valley. Don But the music is far from derivative; indeed, passages of reconstitution of intertitles. The Cinémathèque completed violence into infiltrating the Royal Tobacco Factory in José hears a trumpet calling him back to the barracks. the finale & prefigure the plangent sweeps of Bernard a further tranche of restoration in 2001, working from Seville as a worker to gain inside information for the They both leave with sadness. He decides to return to her Herrmann’s strings in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), for two copies of the film in their collection, one a nitrate smugglers. and they kiss. [In prison at Tarifa, García, with a tattoo example. And the finale is astonishing in other respects negative, and the other a nitrate print, this time mainly of Carmen on his chest, is seen at prayer. Don José on as well, given that in its closing passages it oscillates working on coloration, producing a film of 3824 metres. Seville guard: Carmen distracts him as the smugglers pass by] between minor key, as one might expect for Carmen’s The restored film, with Ernesto Halffter’s original music death, and major key, which is less expected, almost as adapted by François Porcile (familiar in French cinema 5 Don José is seen during the changing of the guard on ! For several evenings Don José searches all the streets though her death is not only a catastrophe but a release, as François Truffaut’s music consultant on a number of horseback outside the ‘Real Fabrica de Tabacos’ (Royal and bars for Carmen. [He meets her at “Chez Calderon”, for her, and for Don José. films), was premièred at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival

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One morning, in the famous stone bullring and in France (the Côte d’Azur, Bayonne, and an old bullfighters’ tavern with its own miniature bull a reward of 200 ducats for the capture of Don José, “the of Ronda, pearl of Andalusia, we argued over a Fontainebleau). Indeed, Feyder’s fondness for local ring! At Lillas Pastia’s tavern at midnight on Friday, murderer, rebel and deserter”, dead or alive. [By chance kiss she thought inappropriate just when we colour led him to expand the opening lines in chapter 3 Don José is waiting for Carmen again. At one o’clock she meets Lucas the bullfighter as he rides by on were about to shoot. of the novella, which deal with Don José’s native in the morning she finally turns up with Don José’s horseback. Back in the house she reads the cards while Maybe because I felt for the 600 walk-ons village. In the film, this opening section becomes an superior officer. They fight and Don José kills the Don José becomes increasingly frustrated and waiting under a leaden sun, or maybe it was the extended episode with impressive shots of countryside officer. Don José flees, badly wounded and is followed mistrustful. Unable to tolerate Don José’s jealous moods, sun’s effect on me, unusually for me I raised and buildings. A youthful José runs frantically across by Carmen who tends to his injuries. Carmen is seen Carmen decides to go out. In the market she meets Lucas my voice. She raised her arms to the sky, her the fields back to his mother’s house, where he kneels deep in thought as she decides whether her future loyalty again. She reads his palm. He flirts with her and invites bracelets tinkling, and cried out: ‘I don’t give a by her side and explains tearfully in flashback how he should be to García or to Don José. Following an old her to the following Sunday’s bullfight at Ronda. When fig about this Mr Mérimée; anyway, where does has accidentally killed a player who had accused him gypsy custom, “elle interrogeait le plomb fondu” (she she returns to the house Don José becomes more violent he live, this Mérimée? I’ll phone him!’. of cheating at pelote basque. We see him leave his questions the melted lead) for guidance]. and more obsessive, demanding where she has been and village with a long and nostalgic backward glance, arrive to whom she has been speaking. On Sunday Carmen The film was nevertheless a great success, despite in a Castilian village comically hidden in a hay-cart, and Tarifa leaves for the bullring and when she has left, a fellow Meller’s idiosyncratic interpretation and her apparent be recruited by soldiers to the army. Similarly, the smuggler comes to see Don José and recounts Carmen’s lack of awareness that Mérimée had died 55 years before incarceration and escape of García, Carmen’s husband, @ Carmen travels by coach to Tarifa to rescue García. At meeting with Lucas at the market. Lucas is seen praying in 1870. Her interpretation of one of the greatest femmes mentioned in only a few words in the novella, are an the harbour, she makes arrangements for García’s escape. in the chapel to the Madonna for her blessing during the fatales of nineteenth-century literature and opera might occasion to focus on impressive architectural mass in Don José has decided to desert the army and to join the forthcoming bullfight]. have put some off – one reviewer complained that she the form of steep prison walls, contrasted with an band of smugglers, where he is seen adapting to their way ‘does not seem to have understood her character’ – but expanse of ruffled sea, as his fellow smugglers take him of life. García finds a file in a roll of bread Carmen has sent Ronda undoubtedly the fact that she was a well-known Spanish away in a boat. him and makes his escape from prison to a waiting boat. star contributed to what attracted reviewers most: the Authenticity was not achieved by locations alone. [When García arrives with Carmen on horseback at the % The bullfight. Lucas and his horse are gored by the bull. film’s authentic feel. After unanimous praise from Costumes are ornate, heavy and multi-layered. The smugglers’ camp, Don José becomes aware, for the first French reviewers, it was hailed as ‘the greatest French (studio-based) taverns have dirt floors and are full of time, of García’s relationship with her. They exchange ^ The wounded Lucas is carried into the chapel where production of the year’ on the front page of the British ‘authentic’ detail in the bric-a-brac which fills them mistrustful and jealous looks as they settle for the night]. he is given the last rites. [Carmen waits for him outside journal The Bioscope, which quoted the Sunday (pitchers, guitars, and so on); a brigand lights his the chapel but Don José, accompanied by Le Dancaïre, Herald’s ‘press opinion’ amongst several others: ‘It cigarette using a burning twig from the fire which he # In the early morning, soldiers ride into the valley has arrived to abduct her. Le Dancaïre is shot as the gives us Spain – real Spain, sunshine and bullfights – in grabs with some tongs; when Carmen removes her ring looking for smugglers. They ambush the smugglers [only soldiers give chase]. a way that neither the novel nor the opera can do’. The in the final scene, her fingers and nails are clearly dirty. a few of whom escape. García shoots the wounded theme of the reviews, whether French, British or Most ‘authentic’ of all, though, are undoubtedly the Remedado in the head. Don José, García and Le Dancaïre & Pursued by the guards who eventually lose track of American, was the film’s simplicity and authenticity. exteriors, particularly the final bullfight, which Feyder hide in the hills. Watched over by Le Dancaïre, Don José them, Don José and Carmen ride into a deserted forest. An American review makes the point about the film’s filmed in the famous arena of Ronda in Spain. This was and García play cards. They quarrel over accusations of They dismount. He pleads with her to live with him but authenticity forcefully: ‘Here is the stuff of the story the ‘high spot’ for Variety’s reviewer, who comments cheating and fight. Don José kills García. Le Dancaïre she refuses: interpreted for the screen as dramatic material distinct that ‘it looks like the most authentic affair of its kind looks after the wounded Don José. Carmen arrives and “Vivre avec toi? Jamais”. from the stereotype model, refreshingly free of opera ever shot and holds a kick for everyone’. As a French embraces Don José who declares that he has killed García Don José: “Réfléchis Carmen. Je suis au bout de tinsel. It is a strong, sober story, its roots deep in human reviewer put it, during such scenes ‘the impression is “dans un combat loyal” (“in loyal combat”). They take ma patience et de mon courage. Prends ton parti ou je beings and in the circumstancing life that surrounds given that quite by chance a cameraman happened to be refuge in a safe house in the village of Gaucin. For prendrai le mien… C’est pour toi que je suis devenu un them’. there, out of sight, and that he is recording scenes from several weeks she nurses him back to health. voleur et un meurtrier… Laisse-moi te sauver et me As had been the case for the earlier L’Atlantide, the life of normal people’. The Bioscope stressed both sauver avec toi”. (Think about it Carmen. My patience Carmen made more use of authentic locations than the sides of this kind of realism: the film is ‘a very grim and The Village of Gaucin is exhausted as is my courage. Decide what it is that studio, in this case various locations in Spain (Ronda bloodthirsty record’, but its ‘chief interest is in the you want or I will decide for you. I have become a thief and Seville where Mérimée sets his original novella), magnificent natural settings’. $ While out in the village Carmen sees a poster offering and a murderer for you… Let me save you and save

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myself alongside you). woman indeed to make films in France, Alice Guy- with Ernst Lubitsch’s German Carmen of 1918, starring and La Terre promise (1925). A short festival with Carmen looks away: “T’aimer encore, José, c’est Blaché, for Gaumont. The film was plagiarized the same the vamp Pola Negri as Carmen. The penchant for silent extracts from her films was devoted to her at the Vieux impossible” (To keep on loving you, José, is impossible) year by the rival firm Pathé, who promptly made another opera persisted in the 1920s; Carmen featured in the Colombier theatre in Paris in February 1925. Feyder is Don José makes one final plea: “Pour la dernière fois veux- version in 1907. These were rapidly followed by Cameo Opera series (1927) and in George Wynn’s reported to have said ironically a few years later that he tu me suivre?” (For the last time will you follow me?) versions made in the UK, the USA and Italy. Many of Tense Moments from Opera (1922). Non-operatic had been asked ‘not to do a film of Carmen with Raquel But Carmen throws his ring to the ground and Don these early films were extremely short, comprising one retellings of the narrative also continued to appear. Meller, but to do something with Raquel Meller on José attacks her, stabbing her to death. Her expression or more arias, typically the Toreador Song, so as to Carmen relocated from the warmth of Andalusia to Carmen’. Typically for the Albatros film company, the is one of complete release. display a particular singer, rather than attempting to tell snowy wastelands in the Dutch-made Carmen of the film was a lavish production, with careful marketing, Don José returns to the guard house in Gaucin where the whole story. The first full-length treatment of the North (1920), the first adaptation to have a which included a making-of book by Meller to coincide he turns himself in. He kisses his horse before being led narrative, in 1910, was French, in Pathé’s Film d’Art contemporary setting. with the film’s release. away. The cell door closes shut on the final chord. series, whose purpose was to legitimize film as Jacques Feyder (1885-1948), a Belgian working in Meller may have had the benefit of bringing popular bourgeois rather than popular music-hall entertainment. France, had been making films since 1915. His version song as a backdrop to her performance, but in other Peter Bromley and Mark Fitz-Gerald Given opera’s high-culture associations, it is hardly of Carmen was the thirty-third, and, as we can see, part respects she proved to be a problem for the director, as surprising that many more Carmen adaptations of a well-established film tradition of Carmen her conception of Carmen was a very personal one. She followed. By the First World War there had been no adaptations. But his version springs quite a few surprises. wrote in the making-of book that ‘Carmen could have Carmen (Jacques Feyder, 1926) less than 22 since Alice Guy-Blaché’s 1906 film. Feyder had had critical and popular success in the been interpreted in many different ways. Is she The first major Carmen films were American. Two early 1920s with two films based on novels by members fundamentally bad? Or is she on the contrary trapped There are over 80 film versions of Carmen from 1906 of these were released more or less simultaneously in of the illustrious Académie Française. L’Atlantide by her situation and her race, which makes her act as to the present day, based either on Prosper Mérimée’s 1915, sparking off vigorous debate about their respective (1921), based on a novel by Pierre Benoit, with location she does, without really being bad. I think very few novella (1845) or on Georges Bizet’s opéra comique merits, as well as leading to a spate of parodies and shooting in Algeria, was one of the most costly films of people do not have a heart’. Feyder explained in a book (1875), or a combination of both. The sheer quantity of comic versions. Cecil B. DeMille’s film starred the the time. Feyder followed this in 1922 with the published during the 1940s how this attitude led to Carmen films makes this one of the most adapted stories opera singer Geraldine Farrar, already famous for her adaptation of a novel by Anatole France, Crainquebille. problems when filming, as Meller insisted on seeing in the history of the cinema. Half of these were released Carmen in performances of Bizet, while Raoul Walsh’s Carmen, in 1926, was yet another literary adaptation, Carmen as a victim of her circumstances: in the silent period. The films range across genres: the Carmen starred the vamp Theda Bara. Of the two films, but – and this was the first novelty – with more emphasis musical, the art film, the popular blockbuster, Black DeMille’s seems to have had the greater popular and on Mérimée’s novella than Bizet’s opera, as Ernesto She did not like reading very much. So she got cinema and animation. And the adaptations stretch critical success, due to the high-cultural status of Farrar. Halffter points out in his interview with Raoul Ploquin. her secretary to read her the story aloud in across the globe. Most are from the USA, France and Her status legitimized the dangerous sexual overtones of The film was conceived as a star vehicle for the snatches, all the while unconsciously creating Spain; but there are more than one in Germany, Italy, the the Carmen story in a way that the sultry Theda Bara Spanish actress Raquel Meller (1888-1962) by the her own story more to her taste and UK and Sweden, and they can be found in places as far could not. Shortly after this, in the spring of 1916, dynamic Films Albatros, a group of Russian expatriates corresponding to her ideals. apart as Argentina, Slovenia, Senegal, and South Africa, Essanay Studios released Charlie Chaplin’s parody of whose films enjoyed particular success in the 1920s, Very pious and full of rigid principles, she suggesting that the Carmen narrative resonates across these two films, Burlesque on Carmen, with Edna due in part to great actors such as Ivan Mozzhukhin and only wanted to play pure, noble and chaste cultures as an archetype or myth. The films have also Purviance as Carmen and Chaplin himself as Darn set-designers such as Lazare Meerson (who was the heroines on screen. featured some of the major stars of the day such as Hosiery (Don José). Future Carmen comedies in the designer for Feyder’s film). Meller was originally a It is not surprising then that there were a Theda Bara, Geraldine Farrar, Pola Negri, and Dolores silent period include The Loves of Carmen (1927), and popular singer; her song ‘La Violeterra’, dating from few conflicts between the two of us over the del Rio in the silent period, and Viviane Romance and The Campus Carmen (1928) with Carole Lombard and 1907, had been an international success. She was the interpretation of Mérimée’s Carmen. Rita Hayworth in the sound period, as well as creating the Max Sennett girls. The Americans were not the only first Spanish popular singer to succeed in both Europe Because I felt that Carmen was slipping. the first Black female film star, Dorothy Dandridge in ones to parody the story, however. There had been a and the Americas, particularly in the USA, where her The capricious and passionate gypsy was Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones in 1954. French version in 1911, for example, where Don José is live concerts broke box office records. She had turned slipping into an insignificant pure young girl, By happy coincidence, the first film, made in 1906, married to a ‘portly’ wife, and is covered in eggs, which to film acting in Spain in 1919, but worked mostly in whose platonic love for a toreador was was French, like the novella and the opera. It was made he had hidden under his cap. France, becoming a star in the films of Henry Roussell: provoking, by a twist of fate, her fiancé Don not by a Frenchman, but a Frenchwoman, the first The First World War clutch of Carmen films ended Les Opprimés (1922), Violettes impériales (1922-23), José’s crime.

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