music

On the first night of Carmen Charles Gounod, the leading French opera composer of the day and Bizet’s admired mentor, was heard to remark, “Take the Spanish airs and mine out of it and there remains nothing to Bizet’s credit but the sauce that masks the fish.” It was an unkind comment - inspired by envy perhaps - but it was perceptive at least in that it recognised the basic stylistic division in the score. On the one hand there is music in the Spanish manner, some of it derived from printed sources; on the other hand there is music in the French operatic tradition, some of it following Gounod’s precedent if not actually using his material. Far from masking this hybrid fish with sauce, however, Bizet emphasises the difference between the two styles to highlight the moral conflict at the heart of the libretto.

Except when he uses it for local-colour purposes, Bizet reserves his Spanish music for Carmen and her gypsy companions, its exotic rhythms and harmonies representing the dangers of sexual temptation and general lawlessness. The straight French music is applied in its most Gounodesque form to Micaëla - Gounod claimed that one of her melodies was actually one of his - as a symbol of moral courage and constancy in the defence of family values. The orchestral Prelude, which immediately sets the Spanish scene by anticipating the fiesta music from the fourth act, introduces two other significant elements. One of them is the now famous toreador song, a deliberately vulgar march tune that Bizet liked enough to use as a recurring theme in the third and fourth acts as well as on Escamillo’s entry in the second. The other significant element, heard at the end of the Prelude after a dramatic silence, is the harmonically sinister and percussively ominous “fate” motif usually associated with Carmen and heard in all kinds of variants on innumerable occasions throughout the opera.

Foremost among the highlights of the first act must be Carmen’s Habanera, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle,” which is not only the first manifestation of Spanish eroticism here but also one of the two most popular numbers in the whole work. The tune was not invented by Bizet - he borrowed it from a song by the Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier - but by adding the swaying habanera rhythm to it and refining it in rehearsal with Galli-Marié he made it his own. Its chromatic minor-key sensuality is the direct antithesis of the pure line and steadfast major harmonies that characterise Micaëla’s exquisite duet with Don José a little later. But it is Carmen’s seductive resources that prevail, partly by means of her defiant “Tra la la” allusions to another Spanish song (by Cuidad Real) when she refuses to be interrogated but above all by the irresistible flamenco provocation of her Seguidilla, “Près des remparts de Séville.”

The charmingly coloured orchestral Entracte that follows is based on the marching song “Halte là! Qui va là?” by which José signals his arrival at Lillas Pastia’s. That doesn’t happen, however, until half-way through a second act that is packed with musical incident, beginning with the increasingly frenzied Gypsy Dance and including the Escamillo celebration with its stirring writing for baritone and its magnificently scored ensembles for chorus and solo voices. Brilliant though those episodes are, the most inspired moment occurs when Carmen sings and dances for José accompanied only by castanets and pizzicato strings until military bugles fortuitously join in from the nearby barracks - a magical counterpoint of hypnotic seduction on the one hand and a call to duty on the other, epitomising the conflict fundamental to the opera. Carmen’s taunts provoke José’s one major aria. Preceded by a sombre reminder of the “fate” motif on cor anglais, “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée” is a passionate outpouring of love the apparent spontaneity of which is all the more remarkable considering it was originally conceived for another opera.

Introduced by an idyllic Entracte of little apparent relevance, the third act is set in inhospitable mountains where only the most intrepid smugglers dare tread. Even so, unlikely though her presence in this place is, Micaëla steals the act. She has no Spanish sensuality to contend with here and the religious conviction expressed in her “Je dis que rien m’épouvante” - the prayerful aria Gounod claimed Bizet had “robbed” from him - outshines the superstition represented by the fortune-telling of the fatalistic Carmen and her frivolous companions. There are more examples of highly resourceful choral writng for the smugglers, a violent encounter between José and Escamillo, dramatic outbursts directed by the insanely jealous José at the immovable Carmen and a romantic version of the toreador song scored for divided cellos. But it is Micaéla’s recall of the music that had won José over in the first act (now to the words “Là-bas est la chaumière”) that achieves the highest emotional profile.

There is no problem about the relevance of the last of the four orchestral entractes. Based on a flamenco piece by Manuel García, it is an unquestionably apt introduction to a last act set in the fiesta surrounding a bullfight. The conflict is now between life and death, between popular celebration on the one hand and the grim resolution of Carmen’s relationship with José on the other. Apart from an amorous duet between Escamillo and Carmen - which, though short, is more than José ever achieved - that is all there is. The conflict is epitomised in musical terms in an orchestral passage just before the final confrontation where the bright fiesta music on woodwind is rent apart by chromatic expressions of foreboding on lower strings. The fate motif brings the two together and, when José has exhausted his despairing eloquence in the face of Carmen’s defiance, it marks the climax of their struggle. At the very moment of Escamillo’s triumph in the bull ring, signalled by a last recall of the toreador song, Carmen meets her end.

Gerald Larner ©2005