Carmen
The story and the musical highlights
- Reading time
- 5 min.
The seduction and the jealousy, the cigar makers and the toreadors, the habanera and the seguidilla: in La Monnaie's new Carmen production, they take on their meaning within a therapeutic role-play. Prepare yourself optimally for this layered opera experience and read the short content of the original story in advance, enriched with music excerpts carefully selected and commented by conductor Nathalie Stutzmann.
Act I
Prélude
Nathalie Stutzmann: Both my parents were opera singers. I rarely travelled with them when they were working. But by some miracle, when I was 11, they took part in a production of Carmen at a major festival in Vichy, France. It was during the school holidays, and so I was able to attend all the rehearsals and performances. My father sang Zuniga and my mother Micaëla. It was love at first sight, I fell completely in love with the work. I remember that I just couldn’t sleep, haunted as I was by the music. I would play the entire score on the piano to try and understand the spell it had cast on me. Conducting this work at La Monnaie is therefore very special for me.
In Seville, Micaëla goes to see her fiancé, Corporal Don José, at the entrance to the barracks, but in vain. After she has left, he arrives with the new guard, which a group of children make fun of. The bell of the tobacco factory next door rings out, marking break time for the cigarette girls, the main attraction for the soldiers.
LA CLOCHE A SONNÉ (CHORUS OF CIGARETTE GIRLS)
Nathalie Stutzmann: The chorus has an important but difficult role in Carmen. As it plays different characters from one passage to the next – soldiers, cigarette girls, smugglers … – the musical colours and modes of expression vary greatly and rapidly. The orchestration in this particular excerpt is quite incredible. You can hear how Bizet renders the swirls of smoke rising from the cigarette girls: he uses many ascending scales, chants with chromatic chords, pianissimi... It’s like a lascivious dance that goes up in smoke. You have to listen carefully to hear these kinds of details beneath the voices, but once you do, they add to your listening pleasure.
One of these girls, Carmencita, draws all the attention. Before going back to work, she tries to seduce Don José by throwing him a flower drawn from her bodice. Micaëla then returns to bring the corporal news of his mother and village. Moved, Don José seems determined to marry her. But the cigarette girls start fighting. Lieutenant Zuniga orders Don José to arrest Carmen, who has wounded one of the other factory girls. Carmen seduces Don José, however, and he lets her escape.
Parle-moi de ma mère (Don José, Micaëla)
Nathalie Stutzmann: When the opera was first performed, Bizet was accused of Wagnerism, whether on account of his use of melodrama or because of certain orchestral features. In my preparatory research, I discovered that Wagner himself greatly admired Carmen. His favourite piece was the magnificent duet between Don José and Micaëla, which in terms of structure is somewhat reminiscent of that from Tannhäuser. The melody, although it seems very simple, also includes some daring dissonant chords. Today, the term ‘Wagnerism’ attributed to certain French composers fortunately no longer has any pejorative connotations.
Act II
ENTRACTE
Nathalie Stutzmann: From the first time I heard it, I was fascinated by the short ‘entracte’ that precedes the second act. The term ‘entracte’ was not chosen at random. It is in no way an introduction to the tavern scene. It is a separate moment. There is almost nothing: the slightly mocking bassoons, the clarinets and the Don José motif (which will be sung later). The composer adds a wonderful bassoon counterpoint beneath the main voice, worthy of a Bach fugue. As a former bassoonist, I particularly enjoy hearing secondary voices of this quality. In the narrative, it is almost like a bubble, a pause, a breath. What is truly beautiful is the unpretentiousness of it all. After that, the entire beginning of the act functions as a long crescendo that reminds me of Ravel’s Boléro. We move from a metronome set at 100 or 104 to finish the sequence at 160 or 170. The sense of acceleration can hardly fail to impress the audience with the frenzy it conjures up.
A month has passed. Carmen and the other cigarette girls are dancing in Lillas Pastia’s tavern, a smugglers’ hideout. Having learned that Don José has been jailed because of her but that his release is imminent, Carmen waits for him. Escamillo, a famous toreador who happens to be in the area, raises a toast to the inn’s patrons. Once everyone has left, Don José joins Carmen and hastily declares his love for her. She invites him to follow her into the mountains to join a group of smugglers. But Don José has to return to his regiment. However, a dispute with his lieutenant, Zuniga, convinces him to desert and go into hiding.
LA FLEUR QUE TU M’AVAIS JETÉE (Don José)
Nathalie Stutzmann: The tenor’s vocal line in this aria is universally admired, of course. But what is most extraordinary about the writing is once again the orchestration, starting with the introduction with the English horn intoning the fate motif. The harmonies, into which augmented seconds are interwoven, are sensational. Bizet is in fact setting a trap for us. It is a declaration of love, but we can subtly anticipate the tragic end of the opera. The last phrase sung on the words ‘je t’aime’ is followed by three chords, combining the duet ‘Parle-moi de ma mère’ and the fate motif. Others would have ended the piece with a perfect cadence, but Bizet unsettles us, disturbs us with a change of harmony.
Act III
Up in the mountains with the smugglers, Carmen reads in the cards her tragic end and that of Don José, who is consumed by jealousy. Tasked with standing guard so that the smugglers can escape the customs officers, Don José meets Escamillo, who tells him that he is attracted to Carmen. The two fight a duel with knives. Carmen intervenes just in time. Having summoned up her courage, Micaëla steps in and tries to take Don José back to his dying mother. Don José agrees to follow her, but not before uttering a disturbing threat to Carmen: ‘Nous nous reverrons!’
“HOLÀ, HOLÀ, JOSÉ !”
Nathalie Stutzmann: This third act as a whole is wonderful, but I would like to draw the audience’s attention to its conclusion. There is a build-up of tension, dramatic arias, ensembles, action, and as we reach the grand finale, the composer decides to place two pages with four solo cellos on the Toreador Song. It is incredibly beautiful. The contrast created by this suspended moment – where the melody, which starts out in a heroic manner, becomes something else entirely, both sensual and sad at the same time, a moment of chamber music amid the tumult – allows us to catch our breath before we can continue. It’s divine.
Act IV
The fate motif
Nathalie Stutzmann: The musical motif of fate is never sung in Carmen, but is only performed by the orchestra. It can be heard clearly from the opening bars, and works pretty much in the same way like the fatum in countless pieces by Tchaikovsky. You can also hear it when the main heroine makes her entrance albeit in a much less conspicuous way, because it is played much faster, a wonderful and novel idea at the time. This is fate knocking at the door, transforming the characters’ paths, something which we human beings constantly struggle against, often in vain.
In front of the bullring in Seville, the toreador Escamillo proudly shows off with Carmen on his arm before the bullfight begins. Hidden among the crowd, Don José watches the young woman. Although aware of the danger she is in, Carmen decides to confront him. Don José desperately tries to win her back, but the gypsy girl doesn’t give in to his threats and pleas. To put an end to it, Carmen throws down the ring he gave her. Desolate, Don José stabs her and then surrenders to the crowd celebrating the bullfighter’s victory.
FINALE (CARMEN, JOSÉ, CHORUS)
Nathalie Stutzmann: The climax of the work is, of course, the final duet. It goes without saying. And this inevitability followed us throughout the work. Carmen begins almost like an operetta. But the final pages leave no doubt as to the tragic nature of the opera: the progression, the vehemence of Don José’s tempo as he repeats, insists and goes faster and faster. And at the most devastating moment, Bizet creates a moving contrast with the joy of the celebrations surrounding the bullfighter, whose cheerful song is performed by the chorus for the first and only time in the score. This burst of sunshine mixed with drama, fate and death is a musical gesture that is quite simply a stroke of genius.
Translation: Patrick Lennon
