CARMEN: The Novel and the Opera

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 461, 23 April 1948, Page 10

CARMEN: The Novel and the Opera

HAT is the most popular opera in the world? Many might say Faust, but a poll taken by a Paris newspaper years ago put Carmen well at the top of the list. Though the test is interesting, Paris, whatever Parisians may think to the contrary, is not the world. It is pretty safe to say, however, that, taking the widest constitueney, either Faust or Carmen is the most popular opera ever written. In our centennial year the New Zealand Broadcasting Service staged Faust with marked artistic success and presented it to highly appreciative audiences in the four centres. It is now preparing to do the same with Carmen. The Theme of Passion The two operas are French, with the difference that whereas Gounod worked on a German theme given to the world by a German, Bizet took a Spanish subject from a book by a Frenchman. Both deal with passionate love, the commonest subject in opera. In Faust, however, ‘the mainspring of the story is the entry of the supernatural. Mephistopheles is the villain of the piece, and there is in him a touch of the saturnine eveningdressed cigarette-smoking ruiner of hearths and homes who used to stalk his way through Adelphi mélodramas when we were very young. In Carmen there is no male villain. The heroine herself fills that part. In Faust the man is the seducer; in Carmen the woman. And the entirely earthly story that Bizet took from Prosper Mérimée, is simpler and more primitive than Goethe’s poetical and_ philosophical version of the old Faust legend. Elemental passions spin the plot more starkly. Faust opens in the gloom of an old man’s study; Carmen in the vivid sunlight of a Spanish street outside a tobacco factory. There is an important difference between the two musical settings. Gounod’s music is entirely French. Bizet never went to Spain, but by the exercise of his imagination and some study of Spanish music, he was able to make us feel that the score conveys the warmth and colour and passion of the south. No doubt to say so does serious injustice to Spanish culture, but with-a very large number of people,

perhaps to most, the mention of Spain calls up first, bull-fighting and Carmen. According to the Oxford Companion to Music, "one does not hear ‘a Spaniard praise Carmen." He regards it as not a faithful reproduction of Spanish life and Spanish musical style. The Novelist Let us trace Carmen to its source. Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870) was a French writer. Fastidious in letters and life, he did not) write much, but a good deal of what he wrote is first-class. Generations of British school-pupils know him through his Colomba. He spoke English perfectly, was at home in the clubs of London, and stayed with Gladstone. Mérimée was a citizen of the world. The original of the opera is his short novel, or long short-story, also called Carmen. Mérimée tells how he goes to Spain to do some archaeological work (he himself was Inspector of Historical Monuments in France), and, riding in the country one day, meets a brigand called Don José, on whose head there is a price. When his guidé goes off to summon the soldiery, so as to get the reward, he warns José, who escapes. Later the traveller meets Carmen, who_ is associated with José. Returning to the district, he finds that José has killed Carmen and lies under sentence of death. In prison José tells him the whole story of his relations with Carmen, from their first meeting outside the tobacco factory in Seville. It is this story that provides the material for the opera. It is agreed that Meilhac and Halévy who supplied Bizet with his libretto did a particularly good job-at any rate up to a point. They showed great skill in introducing so many of the leading incidents of the story in "the brief traffic of the stage." Their "book" is exciting, dramatic, well-knit, and the result shows that it admirably suited Bizet’s powers. But important changes were made, and judging the libretto as literature in comparison with the original, we see that a good deal was lost. The librettists would have argued that to get the necessary effects for opera, this had to be. They could have pointed out that in their version there is less killing. In the novel; Carmen has a husband, but not in the opera. In the ‘book Carmen feels only a passing fancy for a bull fighter; his name is Lucas and he is a mere picador. Though Carmen’s relations with him come into the final tragedy, he makes only a fleeting appearance in the story. In the opera he becomes the matador Escamillo, a full-length char acter. Jose’s Character . There is no Micaela in the book, and though she may be necessary for the balance of the opera, her introduction complicates Mérimée’s psychological picture, It makes José appear worse than he really was. Ernest Newman, the famous English musical critic, remarks that the beginning of José’s downfall lies in his description of his first meeting with Carmen. He was a Basque, and Carmen was something quite new to him -an impudent devil. "In my country, at he Sight of a woman dressed like this everyone would have crossed himself."

When Carmen throws the flower in his face, "I felt as if I had been struck by a cannon-ball." José is an innocent in exile, and Mérimée does not muddle the situation by giving him a Micaela. José, says an editor of Mérimée’s story, throughout "maintains a certain standard of conduct unimpaired. He may become, under force of circumstances, and the stress of his consuming passion, a smuggler, robber, murderer, but he is never a cad." It is easy to understand why the José and Carmen of the novel have more variety and subtlety. A novelist has much more room for elaboration, and Mérimée was very gifted. In the opera Carmen comes to her death-scene on the arm of her lover Escamillo, who goes into the bull-ring, where he is to be the chief hero of the day. In the book it is very different. The last scene is in a "lonely ravine." It is not so much Carmen’s association with Lucas that brings her to her death-that has been a small thing and she says she no longer cares for him-as her refusal to love and live with José. Carmen is a fatalist. "You would kill me; I see it plainly," she says. "It is written. But you will not make me yield." Indeed as a gipsy she admits that José has a right to kill her. José remains an hour-or more prostrated by the body before he buries it and rides to Gordova to give himselt up. José’s narrative is deeply tragic. The Composer Notwithstanding all this, it was an exceptional libretto that Meilhac and Halévy gave to Bizet. The composer was in his thirties, the traditional good boy of the academies. He pleased his teachers, took part in official competitions, and won distinctions. He was a figure in the musical world. He had many commissions: Carmen was one. But Bizet’s earlier operas are rarely if ever performed. Newman says "he had written a quantity of beautiful or charming or expressive music without managing to make a good opera out of it all." He lives to-day by Carmen, and the thusic he wrote for Alphonse Daudet’s three-act play L’Arlésienne, So the librettists must be given substantial credit fgy the success of Carmen. It was firs® performed on March 3, 1875, (continued on next page)

BACKGROUND TO "CARMEN" (continued from previous page) in Paris. In accordance with the convention of what was called "opéra comique," it was given with spoken dialogue. The completely composed version, with recitatives, which is presented on most stages to-day, came into existence after Bizet’s death. The recitatives were composed in Bizet’s style by Ernest Guiraud, one of his intimate friends. The substitution of recitatives for dialogue widened the gap between novel and opera, because when everything is sung it is harder to follow the plot. One of the most popular items in the opera, the "Habanera," was put in to meet the wish of the original Carmen for an aria in the opening scene. Bizet adapted a Spanish song, and re-wrote it a dozen times during rehearsals. Failure at First Carmen had 37 performances at the Opéra Comique in 1875, but at the time it was rated a failure. Some of the criticism was harsh. This was only a few years after the defeat at Prussia’s hands, so Germany was the enemy. Bizet was charged with belonging to the school of Wagner. A few years later, when Carmen had established itself, Bizet was acclaimed an anti-Wagnerite hero in France and elsewhere. Some people in Paris found Carmen immoral. When the director of the theatre was asked by a statesman for a box for thé opening night, he advised him to attend the general rehearsal first as he might find the opera unfit for his children, Bizet did not live to see his genius recognised by the world. He died on June 3, 1875, aged 37. It has been said that his death, three months after the first performance, was hastened by disappointment. It may have been, but he seems to have been a seriously sick man, and no doubt the strain of composing and rehearsal was heavy. Eagerness of Stars Production in Vienna and London was the turning point for Carmen. The opera conquered the Germanic societies as well as Others. Brahms told Debussy he had seen it 21 times, and that Bismarck had beaten him with 27. One proof of the general conquest by the opera was the eagerness of star singers to play Carmen, Hitherto the great ambition of sopranos had been to play Marguerite in Faust. Now, if they had the necessary lower notes, they, as wéll as mezzos and contraltos, wanted to sing Carmen. So keen were singers that they had clauses inserted in their contracts stipulating that they should have the right to appear as Carmen once during the season. Sometimes the result was unfortunate, for’ there were singers who took the part with only the foggiest idea of what Carmen was like. Of one great soprano it is written that she represented Car-, men "as a sweet, mild, persuasive, wellbehaved girl"? whom men were bound to deceive and maltreat. But Carmen has now long been recognised as a

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