Carmen Suite (Shchedrin, after Bizet)

Prelude

Song of the Toreador

Intermezzo

Nocturne

Gypsy Dance

The Toreadors

When Bizet died - on the day of the 33rd of the 45 performances of the first production of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris - he had no idea how enormously popular his last opera would eventually prove to be. If he had known, however, and if he had had the time, he would almost certainly have capitalised on his success by compiling a concert suite of some of the most effective numbers - as he had with his incidental music for L’Arlésienne a few years earlier. The Carmen pieces heard in orchestral concerts today are usually drawn from one or both of the two suites edited by Fritz Hoffmann, who preserved Bizet’s scoring wherever he could.

Since today’s selection does not present the six numbers in the order in which they appear in the opera, there is little point in attempting to follow the story line. It does begin at the beginning, however, with part of the Prelude to the opera, the dramatic episode where terrified violins, agonised cellos and ominous timpani predict the tragic fate lying in wait for the heroine towards the end of the fourth and last act. The Song of the Toreador, one of the most famous arias in all opera, represents the robustly confident character of Escamillo, popular bullfighter hero and rival to Don José for the love of Carmen. His ebullient vocal line is awarded here to a solo cornet. The Intermezzo, which features Bizet’s favourite combination of flute and harp, is a melodiously lyrical interlude from the central point of the opera, and the turning point of the plot, between the second and third acts.

The other major protagonist is the innocent but courageous Micaela who is in love with José and who, if his mother had her way, would be his wife. In the third act she bravely penetrates to the mountain encampment of the smugglers to warn José of the impending death of his mother and, in a characteristically emotional Nocturne, prays (by way of a solo violin this case) for the strength to go through with it. The contrastingly sexy Gypsy Dance comes from the smoky, manzanilla-soaked atmosphere of Lillas Pastia’s tavern in the second act. And finally, in The Toreadors, back to the beginning with the festive music that opens the Prelude to the operand reappears in a colourful episode for the chorus at the bull fight in the last act.

Les Toréadors

Prelude

Seguidille

Les Dragons

Chant du Toréador

Aragonaise

Danse bohème

Bizet himself never wrote a Carmen Suite. For one thing, he didn’t have the opportunity: he died only a year after completing the opera and much of the time that was left to him was taken up by the problems of getting the work staged and revising the score to improve its dramatic effectiveness. For another thing, although the original production was not the complete failure it is traditionally claimed to have been - the composer’s death coincided with the 33rd of a run of 45 performances at the Opéra-Comique in Paris - he could have had no idea of how enormously successful Carmen would eventually become and what demand there would be for the more popular numbers in arrangements of all kinds. Had he lived, however, it is not at all unlikely that Bizet would either have put together an orchestral suite himself or have asked a trusted colleague like Ernest Guiraud to do it for him.

Since today’s selection (drawn from the two Carmen suites compiled by F. Hoffmann) does not present the seven numbers in the order in which they appear in the opera, there is little point in attempting to follow the story line. It does begin at the beginning, however, with the festive music which is heard at the start of the prelude to the opera and which reappears in the fourth act as an accompaniment to the procession of the toreadors (including Escamillo) on their entry into the bullring in Seville. The contrastingly tragic theme prominently featured in the next movement is associated throughout the opera with fate and with Carmen herself.

Though Carmen is, in fact, fated to meet a tragic end in the fourth act of the opera, she leads a tolerably active life in the meantime: her seguidilla, which lures Corporal Don José from the path of soldierly duty in the first act, is only one of her famously seductive dances. Les Dragons (“The Dragoons”) comes from the first entr’acte and is based on a military melody sung offstage by the now demoted Don José in the second act. It is no match, of course, for the heroic toreador song introduced by Escamillo earlier in the same act and heard frequently thereafter. The remaining two dances are both inspired examples of local colouring - the Aragonaise in the healthy outdoor setting of the fourth act, the Danse bohème in the smoky indoor setting of Lillas Pastia’s tavern in the second act.

Prelude -

Aragonaise

Habanera

Séguedille

Danse Bohème

When Bizet died - on the day of the 33rd of the 45 performances of the first production of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris - he had no idea how enormously popular his last opera would eventually prove to be. If he had known, however, and if he had had the time, he would almost certainly have capitalised on his success by compiling a concert suite of some of the most effective numbers - as he had with his incidental music for L’Arlésienne a few years earlier. The Carmen pieces heard in orchestral concerts today are usually drawn from one or both of the two suites edited by Fritz Hoffmann, who preserved Bizet’s scoring wherever he could.

Since today’s selection does not present the five numbers in the order in which they appear in the opera, there is little point in attempting to follow the story line. It does begin near the beginning, however, with the dramatic episode that interrupts the otherwise festive Prelude to the opera with a dire warning - issued by a trumpet and other wind instruments over nervous tremolandos on the violins and ominous thumps in the bass - that a tragic fate is in store for both Carmen and her lover Don José. The Aragonaise, based on a lively Aragonese jota, comes from the other end of the opera, where it sets the scene before the curtain rises on a busy street scene outside the bullring in Seville.

One of the most famous tunes in the opera, the Habanera, is not Bizet’s own. He adapted it from a song called El arreglito which he thought was a folk song but which was actually written by the popular Spanish composer Sebastián Iradier. It was a stroke of genius on Bizet’s part, however, to put the habanera rhythm to it and to present it as a characteristically provocative song and dance for Carmen to taunt her admirers in the first act of the opera: “If I love you,” she sings, “take care!” The Séguedille is another seductive number from the first act where Carmen persuades Corporal Don José into letting her go after she has been arrested for causing a disturbance in the cigarette factory where she works. With the promise of a good time at Lillas Pastia’s tavern he cannot resist. The sexy Danse bohème (or Gypsy Dance) gives a good idea of the kind of entertainment that is in store for him in the smoky, manzanilla-soaked atmosphere of Lillas Pastia’s as he makes his way there in the second act.

Rodion Shchedrin (b 1932)

after Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

Carmen Suite

Introduction, Dance, First Intermezzo, Changing of the Guard, Carmen’s Entrance and Habanera, Scene, Second Intermezzo, Bolero, Torero, Torero and Carmen, Adagio, Fortune-Telling,Finale

Bizet himself was unable to capitalise on Carmen. Although the original production at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1875 was not the complete flop it is traditionally claimed to have been, the composer died before the first run of forty-five performances was over. Where he failed, however, others have succeeded - not only the usual retinue of arrangers and compilers of suites but also the composers who have created whole new stage works out of Bizet’s opera, like Oscar Hammerstein in his all-black Carmen Jones musical in 1943 and Rodion Shchedrin in his all-Soviet Carmen ballet in 1967.

The “Carmen Suite - ballet suite for strings and percussion, based on themes from Carmen by Bizet” (to give Shchedrin’s piece its clumsy full title) is based on an approach quite different from that of Carmen Jones. Hammerstein, while updating and relocating the story, retails the principal musical and dramatic events in much the same order as Bizet and his librettists originally presented them. Shchedrin’s objective was quite different. It was to create a vehicle for a star dancer - his ballerina wife Maya Plisetskay - concentrating on Carmen’s relationship with Fate, restricting the scenario to one act and confining the setting to a bull ring. The only other characters represented by allusions to the Bizet score are Don José and the Toreador.

So, although the thematic material is drawn exclusively from Bizet sources (not only Carmen) it used just as and when Shchedrin wants it - fragmented, jumbled, in some places reharmonised, everywhere rescored for his curiously chosen combination of percussion and strings. Against all the odds, he does it both wittily and effectively. In the Introduction, for example, by isolating phrases from Bizet’s Habanera on bells against sustained string sounds and giving another phrase from the same dance to pizzicato violins, he atmospherically sets the scene. In Dance, on the other hand, he presents the festive last entracte in full and almost literally. The First Intermezzo combines memories of the lusting male chorus’s appeal to Carmen before and after her Habanera (“Carmen! Sur tes pas nous pressons tous”) with allusions to the Fate motif, which is then given the full dramatic treatment in much the same way as in the Prelude to the opera.

The Changing of the Guard refers, paradoxically, not to the music Bizet wrote for the little military ceremony in the first act but to the first entracte and the tune sung-off stage by Don José as he makes his way to Lillas Pastia’s: introduced by a solo viola and dislocated by weird intrusions from the percussion section, it is then quoted more or less straight. Carmen’s Entrance and Habanera presents the heroine in her two main manifestations - the fatalistic Carmen, represented by the Fate motif together with two other superstitious allusions, and the sexy Carmen represented by her Habanera, which is now given in full but in peculiarly Soviet-Russian colouring. Scene makes something strikingly dramatic out of the joyful “Suis nous à travers la campagne” from the second act of the opera, adding Carmen’s provocative “Tra la la la la” from the first act and another reminder of the Fate motif. Apart from the crunch at the end, the Second Intermezzo is a straightforward arrangement of Bizet’s second entracte.

Bizet having unaccountably omitted to include a bolero in his score, Shchedrin makes amends for it, nominally anyway, by taking the Farandole from Bizet’s L’Arlesienne music and calling it Bolero. What we hear in Torero is nothing other than Escamillo’s toreador music but, peculiarly, with the melodic line sometimes subtracted from the accompaniment. Torero and Carmen, on the other hand, is another of Shchedrin’s excursions, this time to Bizet’s La jolie Fille de Perth.

The Adagio, which includes an emotional version of Don José’s second-act aria “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée,” opens with another reference to the Fate motif. So does Fortune-Telling, which confirms Carmen’s fatalism by making something heavily melodramatic out of her card song “En vain éviter” from the third act of the opera. It leads without a break into the last movement. Beginning with the bull-fight crowd’s “Les voici!” authentically interspersed with allusions to the Fate motif, the Finale urgently refers back to “Suis nous à travers la campagne,” confronts Carmen with Don José as in the last act of the opera and, after the last dread entry of the Fate motif, offers a quietly eery echo of the Introduction.