Smile of the Day Thursday March 3, 2022: Carmen

On this Day:

In 1875, Georges Bizer’s last and greatest opera “Carmen” premiered in Paris.

Carmen (French: [kaʁ.mɛn]) is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalized its first audiences.

Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the “Habanera” from act 1 and the “Toreador Song” from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias.

The opera is written in the genre of opéra comique with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childhood sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmen’s love to the glamorous torero Escamillo, after which José kills her in a jealous rage. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality, and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial.

After the premiere, most reviews were critical, and the French public was generally indifferent. Carmen initially gained its reputation through a series of productions outside France, and was not revived in Paris until 1883. Thereafter, it rapidly acquired popularity at home and abroad. Later commentators have asserted that Carmen forms the bridge between the tradition of opéra comique and the realism or verismo that characterised late 19th-century Italian opera.

The music of Carmen has since been widely acclaimed for brilliance of melody, harmony, atmosphere, and orchestration, and for the skill with which Bizet musically represented the emotions and suffering of his characters. After the composer’s death, the score was subject to significant amendment, including the introduction of recitative in place of the original dialogue; there is no standard edition of the opera, and different views exist as to what versions best express Bizet’s intentions. The opera has been recorded many times since the first acoustical recording in 1908, and the story has been the subject of many screen and stage adaptations.

Synopsis

Place: Seville, Spain, and surrounding hills: Around 1820

Act 1

A square, in Seville. On the right, a door to the tobacco factory. At the back, a bridge. On the left, a guardhouse.

A group of soldiers relax in the square, waiting for the changing of the guard and commenting on the passers-by (“Sur la place, chacun passe”). Micaëla appears, seeking José. Moralès tells her that “José is not yet on duty” and invites her to wait with them. She declines, saying she will return later. José arrives with the new guard, who is greeted and imitated by a crowd of urchins (“Avec la garde montante”).

As the factory bell rings, the cigarette girls emerge and exchange banter with young men in the crowd (“La cloche a sonné”). Carmen enters and sings her provocative habanera on the untameable nature of love (“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”). The men plead with her to choose a lover, and after some teasing she throws a flower to Don José, who thus far has been ignoring her but is now annoyed by her insolence.

As the women go back to the factory, Micaëla returns and gives José a letter and a kiss from his mother (“Parle-moi de ma mère!”). He reads that his mother wants him to return home and marry Micaëla, who retreats in shy embarrassment on learning this. Just as José declares that he is ready to heed his mother’s wishes, the women stream from the factory in great agitation. Zuniga, the officer of the guard, learns that Carmen has attacked a woman with a knife. When challenged, Carmen answers with mocking defiance (“Tra la la … Coupe-moi, brûle-moi”); Zuniga orders José to tie her hands while he prepares the prison warrant. Left alone with José, Carmen beguiles him with a seguidilla, in which she sings of a night of dancing and passion with her lover—whoever that may be—in Lillas Pastia’s tavern. Confused yet mesmerised, José agrees to free her hands; as she is led away she pushes her escort to the ground and runs off laughing. José is arrested for dereliction of duty.

Act 2

Lillas Pastia’s Inn

Two months have passed. Carmen and her friends Frasquita and Mercédès are entertaining Zuniga and other officers (“Les tringles des sistres tintaient”) in Pastia’s inn. Carmen is delighted to learn of José’s release from two months’ detention. Outside, a chorus and procession announces the arrival of the toreador Escamillo (“Vivat, vivat le Toréro”). Invited inside, he introduces himself with the “Toreador Song” (“Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre”) and sets his sights on Carmen, who brushes him aside. Lillas Pastia hustles the crowds and the soldiers away.

When only Carmen, Frasquita and Mercédès remain, smugglers Dancaïre and Remendado arrive and reveal their plans to dispose of some recently acquired contraband (“Nous avons en tête une affaire”). Frasquita and Mercédès are keen to help them, but Carmen refuses, since she wishes to wait for José. After the smugglers leave, José arrives. Carmen treats him to a private exotic dance (“Je vais danser en votre honneur … La la la”), but her song is joined by a distant bugle call from the barracks. When José says he must return to duty, she mocks him, and he answers by showing her the flower that she threw to him in the square (“La fleur que tu m’avais jetée”). Unconvinced, Carmen demands he show his love by leaving with her. José refuses to desert, but as he prepares to depart, Zuniga enters looking for Carmen. He and José fight. Carmen summons her gypsy comrades, who restrain Zuniga. Having attacked a superior officer, José now has no choice but to join Carmen and the smugglers (“Suis-nous à travers la campagne”).

Act 3

A wild spot in the mountains

Carmen and José enter with the smugglers and their booty (“Écoute, écoute, compagnons”); Carmen has now become bored with José and tells him scornfully that he should go back to his mother. Frasquita and Mercédès amuse themselves by reading their fortunes from the cards; Carmen joins them and finds that the cards are foretelling her death, and José’s. The smugglers depart to transport their goods while the women distract the local customs officers. José is left behind on guard duty.

Micaëla enters with a guide, seeking José and determined to rescue him from Carmen (“Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante”). On hearing a gunshot she hides in fear; it is José, who has fired at an intruder who proves to be Escamillo. José’s pleasure at meeting the bullfighter turns to anger when Escamillo declares his infatuation with Carmen. The pair fight (“Je suis Escamillo, toréro de Grenade”), but are interrupted by the returning smugglers and girls (“Holà, holà José”). As Escamillo leaves he invites everyone to his next bullfight in Seville. Micaëla is discovered; at first, José will not leave with her despite Carmen’s mockery, but he agrees to go when told that his mother is dying. He departs, vowing he will return. Escamillo is heard in the distance, singing the toreador’s song.

Act 4

Act 4: A square in Seville

Zuniga, Frasquita and Mercédès are among the crowd awaiting the arrival of the bullfighters (“Les voici ! Voici la quadrille!”). Escamillo enters with Carmen, and they express their mutual love (“Si tu m’aimes, Carmen”). As Escamillo goes into the arena, Frasquita and Mercédès warn Carmen that José is nearby, but Carmen is unafraid and willing to speak to him. Alone, she is confronted by the desperate José (“C’est toi !”, “C’est moi !”). While he pleads vainly for her to return to him, cheers are heard from the arena. As José makes his last entreaty, Carmen contemptuously throws down the ring he gave her and attempts to enter the arena. He then stabs her, and as Escamillo is acclaimed by the crowds, Carmen dies. José kneels and sings “Ah! Carmen! ma Carmen adorée!”; as the crowd exits the arena, José confesses to killing Carmen.

Music

Hervé Lacombe, in his survey of 19th-century French opera, contends that Carmen is one of the few works from that large repertory to have stood the test of time. While he places the opera firmly within the long opéra comique tradition, Macdonald considers that it transcends the genre and that its immortality is assured by “the combination in abundance of striking melody, deft harmony and perfectly judged orchestration”. Dean sees Bizet’s principal achievement in the demonstration of the main actions of the opera in the music, rather than in the dialogue, writing that “Few artists have expressed so vividly the torments inflicted by sexual passions and jealousy.” Dean places Bizet’s realism in a different category from the verismo of Puccini and others; he likens the composer to Mozart and Verdi in his ability to engage his audiences with the emotions and sufferings of his characters.

Bizet, who had never visited Spain, sought out appropriate ethnic material to provide an authentic Spanish flavour to his music. Carmen’s habanera is based on an idiomatic song, “El Arreglito”, by the Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier (1809–65). Bizet had taken this to be a genuine folk melody; when he learned its recent origin he added a note to the vocal score, crediting Yradier. He used a genuine folksong as the source of Carmen’s defiant “Coupe-moi, brûle-moi” while other parts of the score, notably the “Seguidilla”, utilise the rhythms and instrumentation associated with flamenco music. However, Dean insists that “[t]his is a French, not a Spanish opera”; the “foreign bodies”, while they undoubtedly contribute to the unique atmosphere of the opera, form only a small ingredient of the complete music.

The prelude to act 1 combines three recurrent themes: the entry of the bullfighters from act 4, the refrain from the Toreador Song from act 2, and the motif that, in two slightly differing forms, represents both Carmen herself and the fate she personifies. This motif, played on clarinet, bassoon, cornet and cellos over tremolo strings, concludes the prelude with an abrupt crescendo. When the curtain rises a light and sunny atmosphere is soon established, and pervades the opening scenes. The mock solemnities of the changing of the guard, and the flirtatious exchanges between the townsfolk and the factory girls, precede a mood change when a brief phrase from the fate motif announces Carmen’s entrance. After her provocative habanera, with its persistent insidious rhythm and changes of key, the fate motif sounds in full when Carmen throws her flower to José before departing. This action elicits from José a passionate A major solo which Dean suggests is the turning-point in his musical characterisation. The softer vein returns briefly, as Micaëla reappears and joins with José in a duet to a warm clarinet and strings accompaniment. The tranquillity is shattered by the women’s noisy quarrel, Carmen’s dramatic re-entry and her defiant interaction with Zuniga. After her beguiling “Seguidilla” provokes José to an exasperated high A sharp shout, Carmen’s escape is preceded by the brief but disconcerting reprise of a fragment from the habanera. Bizet revised this finale several times to increase its dramatic effect.

Act 2 begins with a short prelude, based on a melody that José will sing offstage before his next entry. A festive scene in the inn precedes Escamillo’s tumultuous entrance, in which brass and percussion provide prominent backing while the crowd sings along. The quintet that follows is described by Newman as “of incomparable verve and musical wit”. José’s appearance precipitates a long mutual wooing scene; Carmen sings, dances and plays the castanets; a distant cornet-call summoning José to duty is blended with Carmen’s melody so as to be barely discernible. A muted reference to the fate motif on an English horn leads to José’s “Flower Song”, a flowing continuous melody that ends pianissimo on a sustained high B-flat. José’s insistence that, despite Carmen’s blandishments, he must return to duty leads to a quarrel; the arrival of Zuniga, the consequent fight and José’s unavoidable ensnarement into the lawless life culminates musically in the triumphant hymn to freedom that closes the act.

The prelude to act 3 was originally intended for Bizet’s L’Arlésienne score. Newman describes it as “an exquisite miniature, with much dialoguing and intertwining between the woodwind instruments”. As the action unfolds, the tension between Carmen and José is evident in the music. In the card scene, the lively duet for Frasquita and Mercédès turns ominous when Carmen intervenes; the fate motif underlines her premonition of death. Micaëla’s aria, after her entry in search of José, is a conventional piece, though of deep feeling, preceded and concluded by horn calls. The middle part of the act is occupied by Escamillo and José, now acknowledged as rivals for Carmen’s favour. The music reflects their contrasting attitudes: Escamillo remains, says Newman, “invincibly polite and ironic”, while José is sullen and aggressive. When Micaëla pleads with José to go with her to his mother, the harshness of Carmen’s music reveals her most unsympathetic side. As José departs, vowing to return, the fate theme is heard briefly in the woodwind. The confident, off-stage sound of the departing Escamillo singing the toreador’s refrain provides a distinct contrast to José’s increasing desperation.

The final act is prefaced with a lively orchestral piece derived from Manuel García’s short operetta El Criado Fingido. After the opening crowd scene, the bullfighters’ march is led by the children’s chorus; the crowd hails Escamillo before his short love scene with Carmen. The long finale, in which José makes his last pleas to Carmen and is decisively rejected, is punctuated at critical moments by enthusiastic off-stage shouts from the bullfighting arena. As José kills Carmen, the chorus sing the refrain of the Toreador Song off-stage; the fate motif, which has been suggestively present at various points during the act, is heard fortissimo, together with a brief reference to Carmen’s card scene music. Jose’s last words of love and despair are followed by a final long chord, on which the curtain falls without further musical or vocal comment (per Wikipedia).

First, a Story:

Have you heard of the opera about formula F-1 racers and their technicians?

It’s called Carmen.

Second, a Song:

Gary Edward “Garrison” Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show A Prairie Home Companion (called Garrison Keillor’s Radio Show in some international syndication), which he hosted from 1974 to 2016. Keillor created the fictional Minnesota town Lake Wobegon, the setting of many of his books, including Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories. Other creations include Guy Noir, a detective voiced by Keillor who appeared in A Prairie Home Companion comic skits. Keillor is also the creator of the five-minute daily radio/podcast program The Writer’s Almanac, which pairs one or two poems of his choice with a script about important literary, historical, and scientific events that coincided with that date in history.

In November 2017, Minnesota Public Radio cut all business ties with Keillor after an allegation of inappropriate behavior with a freelance writer for A Prairie Home Companion. On April 13, 2018, MPR and Keillor announced a settlement that allows archives of A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac to be publicly available again, and soon thereafter, Keillor began publishing new episodes of The Writer’s Almanac on his website.

Radio

Garrison Keillor started his professional radio career in November 1969 with Minnesota Educational Radio (MER), later Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), which today distributes programs under the American Public Media (APM) brand. He hosted a weekday drive-time broadcast called A Prairie Home Entertainment, on KSJR FM at St. John’s University in Collegeville. The show’s eclectic music was a major divergence from the station’s usual classical fare. During this time he submitted fiction to The New Yorker magazine, where his first story for that publication, “Local Family Keeps Son Happy,” appeared in September 1970.

Keillor resigned from The Morning Program in February 1971 in protest of what he considered interference with his musical programming; as part of his protest, he played nothing but the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” during one broadcast. When he returned to the station in October, the show was dubbed A Prairie Home Companion.

Keillor has attributed the idea for the live Saturday night radio program to his 1973 assignment to write about the Grand Ole Opry for The New Yorker, but he had already begun showcasing local musicians on the morning show, despite limited studio space. In August 1973, MPR announced plans to broadcast a Saturday night version of A Prairie Home Companion with live musicians.

A Prairie Home Companion (PHC) debuted as an old-style variety show before a live audience on July 6, 1974; it featured guest musicians and a cadre cast doing musical numbers and comic skits replete with elaborate live sound effects. The show was punctuated by spoof commercial spots for PHC fictitious sponsors such as Powdermilk Biscuits, the Ketchup Advisory Board, and the Professional Organization of English Majors (POEM); it presents parodic serial melodramas, such as The Adventures of Guy Noir, Private Eye and The Lives of the Cowboys. Keillor voiced Noir, the cowboy Lefty, and other recurring characters, and provided lead or backup vocals for some of the show’s musical numbers. The show aired from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.

After the show’s intermission, Keillor read clever and often humorous greetings to friends and family at home submitted by members of the theater audience in exchange for an honorarium. Also in the second half of the show, Keillor delivered a monologue called The News from Lake Wobegon, a fictitious town based in part on Keillor’s own hometown of Anoka, Minnesota, and on Freeport and other small towns in Stearns County, Minnesota, where he lived in the early 1970s. Lake Wobegon is a quintessentially Minnesota small town characterized by the narrator as a place “… where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

The original PHC ran until 1987, when Keillor ended it to focus on other projects. In 1989, he launched a new live radio program from New York City, The American Radio Company of the Air, which had essentially the same format as PHC. In 1992, he moved ARC back to St. Paul, and a year later changed the name back to A Prairie Home Companion; it remained a fixture of Saturday night radio broadcasting for decades.

On a typical broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, Keillor’s name was not mentioned unless a guest addressed him by name, although some sketches featured Keillor as his alter ego, Carson Wyler. In the closing credits, which Keillor read, he gave himself no billing or credit except “written by Sarah Bellum,” a joking reference to his own brain.

Keillor regularly took the radio company on the road to broadcast from popular venues around the United States; the touring production typically featured local celebrities and skits incorporating local colour. In April 2000, he took the program to Edinburgh, Scotland, producing two performances in the city’s Queen’s Hall, which were broadcast by BBC Radio. He toured Scotland with the program to celebrate its 25th anniversary. (In the UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, the program is known as Garrison Keillor’s Radio Show.) Keillor produced broadcast performances similar to PHC but without the “Prairie Home Companion” brand, as in his 2008 appearance at the Oregon Bach Festival. He was also the host of The Writer’s Almanac, from 1993 to 2017, which, like PHC, was produced and distributed by American Public Media.

In a March 2011 interview, Keillor announced that he would be retiring from A Prairie Home Companion in 2013; but in a December 2011 interview with the Sioux City Journal, Keillor said: “The show is going well. I love doing it. Why quit?” During an interview on July 20, 2015, Keillor announced his intent to retire from the show after the 2015–2016 season, saying, “I have a lot of other things that I want to do. I mean, nobody retires anymore. Writers never retire. But this is my last season. This tour this summer is the farewell tour.”

Keillor’s final episode of the show was recorded live for an audience of 18,000 fans at the Hollywood Bowl in California on July 1, 2016, and broadcast the next day, ending 42 seasons of the show. After the performance, President Barack Obama phoned Keillor to congratulate him. The show continued on October 15, 2016, with Chris Thile as its host.

Here is LA Habanera with Garrison Keillor from Lake Wobegon Loyalty Days, track 06 – Some Words From Powdermilk Biscuits regarding the life of Dwayne Bizet. I hope you enjoy this!

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-bzuWXvd-I)

Thought for the Day:

“The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.” – Garrison Keillor

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Have a great day!

Dave & Colleen

© 2021 David J. Bilinsky and Colleen E. Bilinsky