2 songs from Carmen

Habanera

Seguidilla

‘Take the Spanish airs and mine out of the score,’ Charles Gounod was heard to remark on the first performance of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in 1875, ‘and there remains nothing to Bizet’s credit but the sauce that masks the fish.’ Well, it is true that Carmen’s first act habanera, ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’, is based on a song called ‘El arregilito’ by the Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier, who no doubt picked up the habanera rhythm when he was working in Cuba. But Bizet’s inspired and hypnotic version of the tune, which is the perfect vehicle for Carmen’s provocative first entry in the opera, adds erotic zest to what was originally a rather insipid fish. It was one of the few items that won spontaneous applause on what turned out to be a generally depressing first night.

When he realized that “El arregilito” was not, as he thought, a folk song but the work of another composer Bizet duly acknowledged his source. He had to make no such apology for Carmen’s seguidilla, “Près des remparts de Séville,” which is probably a result of his preparatory studies in the Spanish idiom rather than a straight borrowing. Certainly, it is so seductive that Corporal Don José, evidently a sucker for manzanilla, cannot resist it. Having been put in charge of Carmen after she has been arrested for causing a violent disturbance in the cigarette factory, he forbids her to speak. But, she says, there is nothing to stop her singing - which she does so to such devastating effect that, accepting the disciplinary consequences for the sake of the promised reward at Lillas Pastia’s tavern, he lets her go.