DG - 3 CDs - 0630-12672-2 - (p) 1996

DG - 1 CD - 3984-21771-2 - (c) 1998

Georges BIZET (1838-1875)





Carmen
158' 01"
Opéra Comique en trois acte d'après la nouvelle de Prosper Mérimée







Compact Disc 1
53' 56"


1. Prélude 3' 29"
*
PREMIER ACTE N° 1: Introduction: 2. "Sur la place chacun passe" (Les soldats, Moralès)
 2' 02"



3. "Regardez donc cette petite" (Moralès, Les soldats, Micaëla) 4' 03"


N° 2: Marche et Choeur des gamins: 4. "Avec la garde montante" [Mélodrame] (Choeur des gamins) 2' 21"



5. "Halte! Repos!" (Zuniga, Moralès, Don José) 0' 53"



6. "Et la garde descendante" (Choeur des gamins) 1' 28"



7. "Dites-moi, brigadier" (Zuniga, Don José) 0' 41"


N° 3: Choeur et Scène: 8. "Voici la cloche qui sonne" / "La cloche a sonné" (Don José, Les jeunes gens, Les soldats, Les cigarières) 2' 26"
*


9. "Dans l'air, nuos suivons la fumée" (Les cigarières, Les jeunes gens) 2' 50"
*


10. "Mais nous ne voyons pas la carmencita" (Les Soldats, Les jeunes gens) 0' 41"



11. "Quand je vous aimerai?" (Carmen) 0' 26"


N° 4: Havanaise: 12. "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" (Carmen, Choeur) 4' 21"
*

N° 5: Scène 13. "Carmen! sur tes pas nous nous pressons tous" (Les jeunes gens, Les cigarières) 2' 05"



14. "Quelle effronterie!" (Don José, Micaëla) 0' 17"


N° 6: Duo 15. "Parle-moi de ma mère!" (Don José, Micaëla) 1' 30"
*


16. "Votre mère avec moi sortait de la chapelle" (Micaëla, Don José) 2' 15"
*


17. "Ma mère, je la vois!" (Don José, Micaëla) 1' 01"
*


18. "Qui sait de quel démon j'allais ȇtre la proie!" (Don José, Micaëla) 4' 41"
*


19. "Attends, je vais finir sa lettre" (Don José, Micaëla) 0' 33"


N° 7: Choeur 20. "Au secours!" (Les cigarières, Zuniga, Les soldats) 4' 02"



21. "Maintenant que nous avons un peu de silence" (Zuniga, Don José) 0' 22"


N° 8: Chanson et Mélodrame 22. "Avez-vous quelque chose à répondre" / "Tra la la la..." (Zuniga, Carmen) 3' 33"



23. "Où me conduirez-vous?" (Carmen, Don José) 0' 53"


N° 9: Chanson [Séguedille] et Duo 24. "Près des remparts de Séville" (Carmen, Don José) 4' 35"
*

N° 10: Finale 25. "Voici l'ordre" (Zuniga, Carmen) 2' 28"



Compact Disc 2
43' 19"


1. Entracte 1' 44"

DEUXIÈME ACTE N° 11: Chanson: 2. "Les tringles des sistres tintaient" (Carmen, Frasquita, Mercédès) 5' 08"
*


3. "Vous avez qualque chose à nous dire" (Zuniga, Pastia, Mercédès, Frasquita, Carmen) 1' 03"


N° 12: Choeur et Ensemble: 4. "Vivat! vivat le toréro!" (Choeur, Zuniga, Mercédès, Andrès, Frasquita, Pastia) 1' 33"


N° 13: Couplets [Air du Toréador]: 5. "Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre" (Escamillo, tous) 4' 40"
*


6. "Messieurs les officiers, je vous en prie!" (Pastia, Zuniga, Escamillo, Carmen) 0' 53"


N° 13bis: Choeur: 7. "Toréador, en garde!" (Choeur) 1' 07"
*


8. "Pourquoi étais-tu si pressé" (Frasquita, Pastia, Le Dancaïre, Mercédès, Le Remendado) 0' 35"


N° 14: Quintette: 9. "Nous avons en tête une affaire" (Le Dancaïre, Frasquita, Mercédès, Le Remendado, Carmen) 4' 56"



10. "En voilà assez!" (Le Dancaïre, Le Remendado, Frasquita, Carmen, Mercédès) 0' 36"


N° 15: Chanson: 11. "Halte-là! Qui va là?" (Don José) 0' 37"



12. "C'est un dragon, ma foi" (Mercédès, Frasquita, Le Dancaïre, Carmen) 0' 21"



13. "Halte-là! Qui va là?" (Don José) 0' 44"



14. "Enfin... te voilà" (Carmen, Don José) 0' 45"


N° 16: Duo: 15. "Je vais danser en votre honneur" [Air de la Fleur] (Carmen, Don José) 5' 55"



16. "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée" (Don José, Carmen) 3' 44"
*


17. "Non! tu ne m'aimes pas!" (Carmen, Don José) 3' 46"
*

N° 17: Finale: 18. "Holà! Carmen! Holà, holà!" (Zuniga, Don José, Carmen, Le Remendado, Le Dancaïre, Les bohémiens) 3' 32"



19. "Suis-nous à travers la campagne" (Frasquita, Mercédès, Carmen, Le Remendado, Le Dancaïre, Les bohémiennes, Don José) 1' 42"



Compact Disc 3
60' 46"


1. Entacte 3' 18"



Premier Tableau


TROISIÈME ACTE N° 18: Introduction:
 2. "Ecoute, compagnon, écoute!" (Les contrebandiers, Frasquita, Mercédès, Carmen, Don José, Le Dancaïre, Le Remendado) 4' 13"



3. "Reposons-nous une heure ici" (Le Dancaïre, Don José, Carmen) 0' 51"


N° 19: Trio: 4. "Melons! Coupons!" (Frasquita, Mercédès) 3' 21"



5. "Carreau! Pique! ... La mort!" (Carmen) 3' 03"
*


6. "Parlez encore, parlez, mes belles" (Frasquita, Mercédès, Carmen) 0' 47"
*


7. "Eh bien? ... nous avons aperçu" (Carmen, Le Dancaïre, Mercédès, Le Remendado, Frasquita, Don José) 0' 29"


N° 20: Morceau d'Ensemble: 8. "Quant au douanier, c'est notre affaire!" (Frasquita, Mercédès, Carmen, Les bohémiennes, Les bohémiens, Le Dancaïre, Le Remendado) 3' 07"
*


9. "Ah, enfin, nous y sommes" (Le guide, Micaëla) 0' 19"


N° 21: Air: 10. "Je dis que rien ne m'épouvante" (Micaëla) 4' 59"
*

N° 22: Duo: 11. "Qui êtes-vous? Répondez" - "Je suis Escamillo, toréro de Grenade" (Don José, Escamillo) 5' 23"


N° 23: Finale: 12. "Holà! holà! José!" (Carmen, Escamillo, Le Dancaïre, Don José, Les contrebandières, Les contrebandiers) 2' 50"



13. "Halte! quelqu' un est là" (Le Remendado, Carmen, Le Dancaïre, Don José, Micaëla, Choeur) 5' 52"



14. Entracte 2' 14"
*


Deuxième Tableau



N° 24: Choeur: 15. "A deux cuartos" (Les marchandes, Les marchands, Zuniga, Andrès, Un bohémien) 2' 18"
*


16. "Qu' avez-vous donc fait de la Carmencita?" (Zuniga, Frasquita, Andrès, Mercédès) 0' 38"


N° 25: Choeur et Scène: 17. "Les voici! Vinci la quadrille" (Les enfants, choeur) 3' 45"
*


18. "Si tu m'aimes, Carmen" (Escamillo, Carmen) 1' 25"



19. "Place! place! au Seigneur Alcade!" (Quatre Alguazils, Les enfants, Choeur, Frasquita, Carmen, Mercédès) 2' 19"


N° 26: Duo finale: 20. "C'est toi!" - "C'est moi!" (Carmen, Don José) 5' 42"
*


21. "Viva! la course est belle!" (Choeur, Don José, Carmen) 3' 54"
*






 
Jennifer LARMORE, CARMEN, une bohémienne CHOR DER BAYERISCHEN STAATSOPER
Thomas MOSER, DON JOSÉ, un brigardier Udo Mehrpohl, Chorus master
Angela GHEORGHIU, MICAËLA, une jeune paysanne KINDERCHOR DER BAYERISCHEN STAATSOPER
Samuel RAMEY, ESCAMILLO, un toréro Eduard Asimont, Chorus master
Nathalie BOISSY, FRASQUITA, bohémienne
 BAYERISCHES STAATSORCHESTER
Natascha PETRINSKY, MERCÉDÈS, bohémienne Giuseppe SINOPOLI
Maurizio MURARO, ZUNIGA, un lieutenant Dialogue adaptation, Language coach & musical assistant: Janine Reiss
Jean-Luc CHAIGNAUD, MORALÈS, un brigardier Musical coach: Donald Wages
Jan ZINKLER, LE DANCAÏRE, contrebandier

Ulrich REß, LE REMENDADO, contrebandier

Gintares WYSNIAUSKAS, ANDRÈS, un lieutenant

Ulrike UHLMANN, UNE MARCHANDE

Dieter MISERRE, UNE BOHÉMIEN

Nicolas TREES, LILLAS PASTIA, le tenancier de taverne

 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Stadthalle, Germering (Germania) - dicembre 1995

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Executive producer
Renate Kupfer

Recording producer
Wolfgang Stengel

Recording engineer
Jens Schünemann, Tobias Lehmann

Digital editing
Stefan Witzel, Jens Schünemann

Prima Edizione LP
-

Prima Edizione CD
Teldec | 0630-12672-2 | LC 6019 | 3 CDs - 53' 56". 43' 19" & 60' 46" | (p) 1996 | DDD
Teldec | 3984-21771-2 | LC 6019 | 1 CD - 76' 13" | (c) 1998 | DDD | Highlights *

Note
-













THE OPERA'S GENESIS AND FIRST PEFORMANCES
I have just been ordered to compose three acts for the Opéra Comique. Meilhac and Halévy are doing my piece" - so runs the first brief reference to Carmen in Bizet's correspondence.Henri Meilhac was also known as a cartoonist, while Ludovic Halévy had a full-time job at the Ministry of the Interior and in the Algeria Office. Their other collaborations include not only Offenbach's La belle Hélène and La vie parisienne but also the original scenario for Johann Strauß’s Die Fledermaus. They made numerous changes to Mérimées short story in an attempt to tone down the character of Carmen and make her more suitable to the operatic stage, turning the common prostitute into a “normal” woman, a transformation that ultimately constituted a far greater assault on society. They invented the character of Micaëla and, with her, the idea of domestic happiness, conceiving her as the embodiment of chaste and steadfast love and, as such, a foil to Carmen. Although the figure of Escamillo is to be found in Mérimée, he is no swaggeringly successful bullfighter. The librettists also added the usual stock-in-trade of opéra comique, including street urchins, smugglers and the chorus outside the bullring. All these characters are related to their counterparts in Offenbach's operettas, which are likewise peopled with smugglers and robbers, soldiers and women of easy virtue; only Bizet’s music has invested them with individuality. Like the composer, Meilhac and Halévy never visited Spain, but they used a whole series of authentic sources, chief of which were contemporary travelogues by writers such as Théophile Gautier and Alexandre Dumas père and engravings by Gustave Doré and others, all of which served as concrete models in drafting the scenario and dialogue. Some of the words, including those of the Habanera, are by Bizet himself.
Although Carmen is now one of the most widely performed of all operas, its first performance on 3 March 1875 was a flop. Halévy described his impressions of the first night in a hurried letter to a friend written on the morning after the performance, allowing us to recapture something of the mood of that occasion:
"Act I well received. Galli-Marié's first song applauded, also the duet for Micaëla and José. End of the act good - applause, singers called back on stage. A lot of people on stage after this act. Bizet surrounded and congratulated. The second act less fortunate. The opening very brilliant. Great effect from the toreador's entry, followed by coldness. From that point on, as Bizet deviated more and more from traditional form of opéra comique, the public was surprised, discountenanced perplexed. Fewer people round Bizet between the acts. Congratulations less sincere, embarrassed, constrained. The coldness more marked in the third act [scene one]. The only thing applauded was Micaëla's air, of old classical cut. Still fewer people on stage. And after the fourth act [third act, scene two], which was glacial from first to last, no one at all except three or four faithful and sincere friends of Bizet's. They all had reassuring phrases on their lips but sadness in their eyes. Carmen had failed."
The reasons fo this failure were due as much to the subject matter as to the music. Even before the first night, there had already been criticism of the allegedly "immortal" action and its cast of smugglers and cigarette makers. Particular obloquy was reserved for the final scene, in which the heroine is murdered on stage. Moreover, Bizet himself was the subject of immoderately high and irreconcilable expectations. It was said that he would either restore opéra comique to its former glory or that he would adopt a grand Wagnerian manner. In the event, he confounded both these expectations by picking up the tradition of French opéra comique and developing it by combining it with social and emotional realism. The critics had a field-day, accusing the composer of immorality and claiming that the score lacked order, planning and clarity and that the subject matter was unsuited to the theatre. None the less, the work had already been performed no fewer than thirtythree times by the date of Bizet’s sudden death on 3 June 1875, the charge of immorality merely serving to add to the opera's appeal. Carmen was given forty-eight times during the 1875/76 season, but then disappeared from the Paris repertory for many years, not returning to the composer's native city until its success had been assured by a number of productions abroad.
VERSIONS OF THE OPERA
Carmen belongs to the French opéra comique tradition, in which arias and ensembles are interspersed with spoken dialogue. (A similar feature may be found in German Singspiels such as Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte.) For the first Viennese production of the work in October 1875 (in other words, after the composer's death), Ernest Guiraud, a friend of Bizet's, replaced the spoken dialogue with recitatives, while at the same time taking the opportunity to cut portions of the text. He also altered the instrumentation and even interpolated a ballet. His recitatives reveal an embryonic leitmotif technique clearly designed to turn the work into a grand opéra and to transform what had been a light opéra comique, with its relatively comic tone, into an emotionally heavyweight grand opéra. (A number of Offenbach’s works are likewise termed opéras comiques.) Not until 1906 did Hans Gregor restore the spoken dialogue for a production in Berlin. Walter Felsenstein's 1949 production was only one of many attempts to provide a new German translation of the work, but even he had difficulty establishing an authentic version, since not even the first French printed edition of the vocal score is identical in every respect with Bizet's autograph sources.
It was not until much later that the conducting score used at the first performance was rediscovered, revealing that no fewer than 71 sides of the score had been pasted over or stitched together while at the same time enabling scholars to tell which changes to the instrumentation and performance markings such as tempo had been made by Bizet himself and which had been introduced subsequently. Fritz Oeser’s “Critical New Edition Based on All Existing Sources” was published in 1964 and immediately caused an outcry not least because other musicologists placed a different interpretation on the sources. Moreover it is now virtually impossible to say which cuts and additions were instigated by Bizet himself, which were merely concessions to particular singers or to the circumstances surrounding the first production, and which should be regarded as being of lasting significance.
For Giuseppe Sinopoli, Fritz Oeser’s great merit lies in his “having had the courage after all these years to come up with a critical edition based on Bizet's original sources. My own particular aim was to perform everything just as Bizet wanted it. All the cuts that are so often undertaken result in a piece that is neither simpler nor more beautiful nor more logical than Bizet’s original, but in reality detract from it. What is lost in this way are often small details, nuances, a slightly different perspective or a brief retrospective glance which is, however of great interest and dramaturgically justified. Bizet's original is a precise and implacable dramatic run-through, the result of a sincere desire to reflect and brood on the way in which a story like Carmen's could come about.”
LOVE THAT ENDS IN DISASTER
For all its folklore and local colour, Carmen is ultimately about the conflict between two people who love each other and in doing so cause each other pain and disillusionment - a love, in short, that ends in disaster. Carmen is one of the first operas not to include in its cast-list any characters from the upper echelons of society: the conflicts are not due to any social factors but stem from an unavoidable clash of emotions.
For José, Carmen is a femme fatale, he describes her as a witch, a demon and even as a devil. He thinks she has magic powers. Whether or not this view of Carmen is rooted in superstition or in his general fear of women, it leads to his losing his direction in life and ultimately to his moral collapse. José is afraid of Carmen and of the force of her femininity. And Carmen certainly uses her sexuality in a calculating way. But it remains doubtful whether we can really call her a femme fatale. She does not intentionally cause ]osé’s downfall but defines her own space and insists on her freedom. Carmen is both instigator and victim at one and the same time. She is introduced as an object of male desire: she sings and dances for men, is used by Lillas Pastia to drum up trade and helps the smugglers by distracting customs officers and soldiers with her physical charms. But she also tries to break out of this role and to protect herself from men. Her Habanera is an expression of her philosophy: her love cannot be obtained by threats or cajolery. “If you don’t love me, I love you, and if I love you, beware!” The men she wants are precisely those who do not immediately lust after her José initially appears unimpressed and, as such, represents a challenge. Only when he is so much in love with her that he is willing to suffer degradation and imprisonment on her account is she herself impressed. But later he begins to bore her and she drops him without a moment's hesitation, not least because he is not prepared to subordinate his duties as a soldier to his love for her. In the end Carmen chooses death, literally provoking José into killing her.
In turn, José expects too much of Carmen with his insistence on possessing her to the exclusion of all else. He fails to understand her true nature. Don José is an impoverished member of the rural aristocracy who gives the impression of being a mother-fixated petty bourgeois dreaming of domestic bliss. He is perfectly well aware that he could find such happiness with Micaëla, the submissive and naïve country girl, but makes no attempt to pursue this line of least resistance. The feelings that draw him to Carmen - first love, then hatred - are stronger Walter Felsenstein once described Carmen as “a string of confused relationships”: Micaëla loves José, José loves Carmen, Carmen loves Escamillo, and Escamillo loves no one but himself.
THE MUSIC
Carmen is a typical opéra comique, even if this fact may have become obscured as a result of adaptations of the score that have long been common currency. Not even the tragic dénouement in the form of Carmen's murder is at odds with this tradition: the term opéra comique has little to do with the English word "comic" and rather more to do with Balzac's comédie humaine. Moreover, there had been examples of opéras comiques with tragic endings even before Bizet. Typical of the genre is the use of spoken dialogue between the musical numbers, and the realistic way in which music is pressed into service: the march of the street urchins in Act One, the Habanera, Seguidilla and Carmen’s song in Act Two with its castanet accompaniment and trumpet calls in the background are all realistic numbers that could equally well be found as incidental music in a play. Alongside these, there are of course arias, ensembles and choral numbers, but astonishingly few of them are typically operatic in style. All, moreover, are legitimised by the action.
Music’s affinities with dance add a further dimension here: in Carmen, music is often an expression of the whole body, not just of the voice. Even the overture already encapsulates the opera's basic conflict, the music associated with the bullfight being offset by a dramatic motif in D minor that ends abruptly in adissonance and that can be regarded as expression of Carmen's rebellious nature and desire for freedom. In the rest of the work, too, lyrical and dramatic elements are interwoven with others of a more folklike character. Yet all are related to the action and are never used for their own sake. The choice of particular leitmotifs, the sophisticated use of dynamic markings and the rhythmic design of the piece are likewise all subservient to the overriding drama. Even the Introduction to Act One is a classic example of Bizet's mastery in terms of its basic mood and appropriateness to the action: beginning with a musical portrait of the strolling crowd, it almost allows the listener to feel the Spanish sun beating down before introducing us to Micaëla, who, initially afraid, mischievously adopts the soldiers’ teasing tone before slipping away "like a bird", her escape clearly audible in the orchestra.
Carme's Seguidilla is an example of a typically Spanish dance, whereas the habanera is Cuban in origin, the flamenco of gypsy provenance. With its descending scale ending on the dominant, the Fate motif recalls Andalusian music, in which oriental influence is unmistakable. Yet Carmen does not claim to be a faithful musical portrait of Spain. In Bizet`s day, Spanish music was something of a fashionable phenomenon and, like Hungarian music, was used by many composers to add spice to their musical language. One thinks in this context of works such as Glinka's Spanish Overtures, Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol, Sarasate's Spanische Tänze, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, Chabrier's España and Debussy’s Ibéria. It was not until much later that composers such as Ravel (himself half-Basque in origin), Falla, Albéniz and Granados wrote music with which the Spanish themselves could identify.
Andreas Richter
(Translation: Stewart Spencer)