May 2, 2019 Program Notes: Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet into suites for concert performance. culture. Seville, in and around which the opera is set. The opera’s tone of Born October 25, 1838, in Paris; • The Suite No. 1 presents a Bizet had started out as a prodigy obsessive passion and destructive died June 3, 1875, in Bougival, just combination of pieces that serve composer, his gifts acknowledged jealousy has nothing in common outside Paris as interludes or preludes in their by well-positioned supporters with the antics of the wily barber original context with instrumental like Offenbach and Gounod. But Figaro, whose adventures unfold in Carmen Suite No. 1 versions of vocal numbers from the he struggled to win over the fickle the same Andalusian setting. Composed: 1873-74 opera. Parisian public and found it difficult to navigate the maze of producers’ After Bizet’s sudden, premature First performance: Carmen opened demands as well as public taste. death, his associates determined he history of opera is packed on March 3, 1875, in Paris; this Bizet was also a victim of bad to salvage the music in the face with erstwhile successes that Suite of extracts was arranged and T timing. The economic fallout from of Carmen’s poor future prospects fell into oblivion soon after their published posthumously, in 1882 France’s humiliating defeat in onstage. His friend Ernest Guiraud composers’ deaths. But Carmen the Franco-Prussian War and the (a native of New Orleans) composed Duration: approximately 12 illustrates a dramatic reversal ensuing Paris Commune of 1871 recitatives to increase Carmen’s minutes of that pattern and has made left its mark on the contemporary potential to be revived elsewhere. Georges Bizet a sort of patron These extracts from Carmen are French spirit—just as Bizet was (Bizet’s original score followed saint of posthumous success. It’s scored for 2 flutes (2nd doubling entering the prime years of his the conventions of contemporary not accurate to describe Carmen’s piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling career. opéra-comique—which, despite the premiere on March 3, 1875, as a English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 name, could involve tragedy—in total fiasco—it continued for a bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, He had banked on the heated story its use of spoken dialogue.) Bizet’s comparatively decent run—but 3 trombones, timpani, triangle, of the free-spirited young heroine publisher also commissioned two the reaction was one overall of tambourine, snare drum, bass and her fatally possessive lover. concert suites of six pieces each, disappointment and/or shock drum, cymbals, castanets, harp, Its source was a novella published which combine instrumental triggered by its unprecedented and strings. three decades earlier by the French interludes with purely instrumental aspects. Bizet died exactly three writer and archeologist Prosper versions of several vocal numbers. In sum: months after the opening, only Mérimée (1803-1870), a polymath 36 years old. Like Jonathan Larson who harbored a special fascination What to listen for • Carmen is now one of the most in the 1990s, whose unexpected for Spain and Russia (he was an Conductors often reorder the pieces potent and recognizable icons death prevented him from enjoying important translator of Russian comprising the suites (to imitate from classical music and opera, yet the tremendous acclaim reaped literature into French). For all the the opera’s chronological ordering, its composer died before he could by his musical Rent, the French opera’s associations with Spain, for example). As published, the enjoy the success of his creation. composer would never know of Mérimée’s Carmen may have drawn Suite No. 1 begins with the part • Following Georges Bizet’s the unimaginably far-reaching on a work he had translated from of the Prelude to Act I in which death—the composer died three “afterlife” that Carmen has Russian: The Gypsies, Pushkin’s trembling strings introduce darkly months after Carmen premiered— enjoyed—including beyond the narrative poem from the mid-1820s. intone the ominous Fate motif. In his colleagues arranged and opera stage, as in these concert Another curious irony is the fact the Aragonaise, Bizet presents one published excerpts from the opera excepts, let alone in popular that Bizet himself never set foot in of several Spanish-flavored dances

May 2, 2019 May 2, 2019 laced throughout the opera. It version as sung by Carmen, a piece of serves as an interlude between the performance art with dance in which third and fourth acts, right before she initially seduces Don José. A slice the climactic bullfight during which of his life as a soldier is depicted by the disgraced soldier Don José— the marching music of Les Dragons now turned stalker—confronts his d’Alcala. The Marche du Toréador is the ex-lover Carmen. A bucolic, flute- musical emblem of José’s rival, the sweetened Intermezzo (which bullfighter Don Escamillo. It appears is the prelude to the third act) both in the Prelude to Act I and in shifts the scene outside Seville to the climactic murder scene. The festive cheer greeting the parading a remote place where Don José, toreadors evokes the public spaces in now a fugitive, pursues Carmen. which Carmen’s tragedy plays out. The Seguidilla is both a folksong- flavored aria and, in its original —© 2019 Thomas May

May 2, 2019 May 2, 2019