Libera e dissoluta! È Carmen

Every woman is gall; she grants but two hours of gladness:
One on her marriage bed, and one on her death bed.
—
Thus opens Merimée’s Carmen.

A writer but also an archaeologist and a leading figure in architectural conservation in post-revolutionary France, Prosper Merimée is fascinated by mystery and psychological drama. His works often took place outside France to land in exotic settings suited to his sympathy for the bohemian world.

He traveled extensively and did not hesitate to become acquainted with all kinds of people, regardless of their social and cultural backgrounds.

In Spain, he met Count Montijo Cipriano de Palafox y Portocarrero de Guzmán in 1830. It was apparently his consort who confided to the tenebrous writer the story from which he drew his Carmen, creating an absolutely unusual and innovative subject.

Bizet wrote his Carmen from Prosper Mérimée’s novella of the same name published in 1847. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. The opera was supposed to be performed at the end of the year, but the staging ran into many problems that delayed its realization. The premiere was thus on March 3, 1875.

Protests to the opera destined to revolutionize the operatic repertoire in the years to come were not long in coming.

Opéra-Comique presented mainly uplifting pieces in which virtue was ultimately rewarded where themes of lawlessness and murder were hardly dealt with.

Pressure on the librettists to soften the opera’s stark ending saw Bizet’s firm opposition. The composer managed to keep the ending intact by agreeing only to soften some of the stronger aspects of Merimée’s novella. The characterization of the characters remained intact and, though sweetened, Merimée’s novella was kept intact in its fundamental aspects.

The rehearsals were also extremely difficult. Bizet encountered opposition from members of the Opéra-Comique orchestra who found it difficult to perform the difficult score and from singers who were not used to moving so much on stage.

The premiere of the opera on March 3, 1875, was very coldly received: audiences and critics were shocked by the crude themes shown to the public in such a realistic way and by the bold musical choices; the opera was judged dissolute and immoral.

Bizet defended his Carmen and was always, rightly, deeply convinced of it. But the failure disappointed him, certainly contributing to the deterioration of his health that led to his death on June 3, 1875 at only 36 years of age.

Shortly thereafter, thanks to the contract signed the day before he died, Bizet’s opera enjoyed its well-deserved success. Carmen, re-adapted by replacing the dialogic parts with recitatives, was performed in Vienna on October 23, 1875, gaining favor with the audience, orchestra and singers. Thus began its rise that saw among its admirers Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Pyotr Il’ič Tchaikovsky, Giacomo Puccini, Johannes Brahms and later the young Sigmund Freud.

It was precisely that sinful realism that made it an avant-garde work, opening it up to verismo, news events and characters endowed with psychological complexity.

Jamais Carmen ne cédera!
Libre elle est née et libre elle mourra!

Carmen is beautiful, exotic, passionate and cruel. She lives her strength on the fringes of society, swaggering and enchanting she does not mind the rules or fear authority. In fact, she makes a mockery of it!

The gypsy Carmen possesses and therefore emanates her free pride, she loves and dislikes the man she is bound to, she asserts her freedom even in the fleeting desire that belongs to her.

In the visceral and enthralling plot told by Bizet’s opera, it is Carmen’s vital momentum, her unconditional passion for freedom that makes her unique, modern. She lives the moment with the knowledge and the will to do so.

Thus, in her extreme act, she defies Don José, she does so by consciously going to her death, dying for the value she considers indispensable: respect for herself and her freedom.

Indomitable and irreducible, Carmen is neither understood nor loved in the complexity of her being; her incorruptible cruelty and inscrutable interiority make her unacceptable, condemning her to death.

Thus relives Merimée’s feline Carmen. Her gaze like that of a wolf or a cat, proud and jealous of her own independence.

Zeffirelli loves Bizet, but even more so he is fascinated by the character of Carmen. Hard on those unfair criticisms that “killed” the wounded Bizet, rightly in love with his opera, he considers the character of Carmen fundamental in the history of literature. Quoting a statement by Tolstoy: “And finally, the third source of inspiration are two portraits of women who changed the world: Jane Eyre by the Brontë and Carmen by Mérimée.”

Zeffirelli devoted five different stagings to Carmen: at the Carlo Felice in Genoa in 1956 with Giulietta Simionato, at the Wiener Staatsoper in 1978 with Carlos Kleiber conducting, at the Arena di Verona in 1995 and 2009, and in 1996 at the Metropolitan New York with James Levine conducting.

Of the magical 1978 version at the Wiener Staatsoper with Placido Domingo and Elena Obratzova, Zeffirelli recalls in particular the great understanding with conductor Carlos Kleiber agreeing that “Bizet had not written an entrance aria for Carmen, and he conceived the entrance of the protagonist as Mérimée had told it: a kind of wild black cat who crosses the street to disappear immediately. An eerie apparition, in short, dazzling.”

By contrast, the project of an opera film of Carmen with Maria Callas “acting for the camera never saw the light of day, while the splendid recording she had made twelve years earlier with Prêtre could have been used for the voice.” Long vague, the project was partially staged “posthumously” in Callas forever with Fanny Ardant.