The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta. Michael White

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       Principal Characters

      Carmen, a gypsy girl

      Don José, a corporal

      Micaëla, a country girl

      Zuniga, Don José’s lieutenant

      Escamillo, a toreador

       Synopsis of the Plot

      Setting: Seville, Spain; about 1820

      ACT I In the square, dominated by a cigarette factory, a group of soldiers are lazily mounting guard when Micaëla arrives, looking for her soldier sweetheart, Don José, and is told to come back later. As Don José and Zuniga march in with the relief guard, the girls emerge from the factory for a break and Carmen is quickly surrounded by admirers. With her eye firmly fixed on José, she warns that loving her is a dangerous game and she tosses him a rose. When everyone has gone, José retrieves the rose and hides it in his tunic. Micaëla returns and is telling José news about his mother when José is informed that Carmen has attacked another girl, and he must arrest and guard her. Left alone with José, Carmen charms him into allowing her to escape.

      ACT II Carmen is the centre of admiration at the local inn. Escamillo, the toreador, is particularly captivated by her, as is Zuniga. But when Carmen learns that José, who has been demoted and imprisoned for helping her, is about to be released, she warns them both to go away and not return. José arrives, delighted to be back with his beloved Carmen, who tries to persuade him to throw in his lot with some smugglers with whom she is working. José refuses, but when Zuniga returns and is attacked by Carmen’s new friends, he has no alternative but to escape with them.

      ACT III In the smugglers’ hideaway Carmen and José are becoming increasingly disillusioned with each other. Escamillo comes looking for Carmen and José is forced to fight him. Micaëla, who has been searching for José, pleads with him to go with her to see his dying mother. José agrees, but he warns Carmen that the affair is not yet over.

      ACT IV A grand bullfight is about to take place and Carmen enters triumphantly on Escamillo’s arm, ignoring warnings that José is in the crowd. Confronted by her rejected lover, she refuses to return to him and throws his ring in his face. Consumed by jealous rage, José stabs her to the heart before giving himself up.

       Music and Background

      Carmen is written in a form known as opéra comique, which means not that it’s a comedy but that it mixes song with spoken dialogue, and would have surprised audiences of its time in that it takes the otherwise straightforward ‘comique’ style to unprecedented levels of perfection and sophistication. Spain was an abiding obsession of French composers from the later 19th century onwards, and Carmen is saturated in local colour, with set-piece Spanish dances like the habanera and seguidilla. The orchestration is especially fine – it was praised by later composers like Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss – and the emphasis on orchestral sound is the one vaguely understandable reason why contemporary critics thought of it as Wagnerian.

       Highlights

      Arguably every thirty bars! Act I has Carmen’s habanera ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’ and seguidilla ‘Près des ramparts de Séville’. Act II introduces Escamillo with his bullish ‘Toréador, en garde’, and gives Don José his first real chance to shine with the Flower Song: ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetée’. Act III has Carmen’s fatalistic foresight of death, ‘En vain pour éviter’, and Micaëla’s enchanting ‘Je dis que rien’, with a dramatic highlight in José’s ‘Dût-il m’en coûter la vie’. Act IV begins with the procession to the bull ring.

      Did You Know?

      Recommended Recording

      Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras, Katia Ricciarelli, José van Dam, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Herbert von Karajan. DG 410 088-2. A hard choice when there are so many alternatives – including Maria Callas (EMI), Marilyn Horne (DG) and Teresa Berganza (DG) – but this is a near-flawless cast, with Baltsa on devastating form, before the voice got raw.

Les Pêcheurs de Perles

      (The Pearl Fishers)

       FORM: Opera in three acts; in French

       COMPOSER: Georges Bizet (1838–75)

       LIBRETTO: M. Carré and E. Cormon

       FIRST PERFORMANCE: Paris, 30 September 1863

       Principal Characters

      Leïla, a Brahman priestess

Soprano

      Zurga, the fishermen’s leader

Baritone

      Nadir, a fisherman

Tenor

      Nourabad, a Brahman high priest

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