Much of the career of Georges Bizet (1838-1875) was spent as an arranger or orchestrator of scores and as a rehearsal pianist for a number of theatres in Paris during his lifetime. This meant that he came to know the operatic repertoire inside and out, and he was a man of the theatre as well as a musician. As an opera composer, however, he wasn’t terribly successful until his opera The Pearl Fishers was commissioned by the Theatre Lyrique in 1863. It had a respectable 18 performances and was well thought of by many of his contemporaries, but it was never revived in his lifetime. Not long afterwards, in 1867, another of his operas, The Fair Maid of Perth, was presented at the Lyrique, again had 18 performances and again disappeared from sight. Many other works exist in fragments, never quite making it to the stage. In 1871 he was finally offered a commission by the Opéra Comique for a one-act oriental fantasy entitled Djalimeh. Although it did not do well, the Comique decided to take a chance on offering him a three-act commission. As was common for the period, they hired the librettists and left the creators on their own to choose a subject.
It was Bizet himself who presented the striking and original idea of setting Carmen as an opera. The Mérimée novella had been originally published in 1845 and it caused something of a scandal with all its gypsy passion, Spanish color and fleshed-out characters. The Comique’s chosen librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, were old hands at opera theatre work. They had both provided excellent librettos for Jacques Offenbach. And although they were initially scandalized by Bizet’s choice, they eventually came around. After all, it gave them the opportunity to write something quite different from what they had been used to. But it was the directors of the theatre, Camille
Du Locle and Adolphe de Leuven who feared for the audiences’ reaction. In fact, de Leuven, the more old-fashioned of the two directors, was so incensed with even the possibility of Carmen being produced by the Comique that he resigned from the company. Here is De Leuven’s reaction on hearing of the composer’s choice:
Isn’t she killed by her lover? And that background of thieves, gypsies, cigar-makers!—At the Opera-Comique, a family theatre! The theatre where marriages are arranged! Every night five or six boxes are taken for that purpose. You will frighten off our audience. It’s impossible!
Du Locle was much more progressive and he allowed the production of Carmen to go forward, but not without reservations, begging Bizet and his collaborators to tone down some of the more salacious aspects of the story. (Du Locle was also a sometime collaborator with Verdi, completing the French version of the libretto of Don Carlo and providing the original scenario for the opera Aïda.)
Carmen was completed by the summer of 1874 and in September a five-month rehearsal process began. The lengthy preparation period was certainly needed because of revisions which were constantly being demanded by the theatre. The chorus and the orchestra caused considerable problems themselves. At the Comique the chorus usually stood in one spot during an opera with their eyes fixed on the conductor. They were finding it impossible to do what the composer demanded: that they actually be involved in the action of the plot. They had never been challenged to act and nearly rebelled at having to move and sing at the same time. For their part, the orchestra refused to play certain passages which they thought to be utterly unplayable. The principal singers weren’t much better, but the first Carmen, Marie Galli-Marié, believed whole-heartedly in the work and in the composer; with her encouragement and support, the piece made it through the grueling rehearsal process and had its first performance on March 3, 1875.
In the audience that night were the most important musicians in Paris at the time: Massenet, Offenbach, Delibes, Thomas and Gounod. The first act was well received but by the time the sexy gypsy was stabbed by her former lover Don José on a street outside the bull ring at the end of the opera, the audience’s enthusiasm had waned. They were completely bewildered, shocked and uncomprehending of what they had seen on stage. They were also stunned by what they heard musically between the pages of spoken dialogue which had always been a hallmark of Opera Comique productions. According to one of the opening night critics:
It is a delirium of castanets, of provocative hip-swinging, of knife stabs gallantly distributed among both sexes; of cigarettes roasted by the ladies; of St. Vitus dances, smutty rather than sensuous. The pathological condition of this unfortunate woman more likely to inspire the solicitude of physicians than to interest the decent spectators who come to the Opera Comique accompanied by their wives and daughters…At the Comique, a subsidized theatre, a decent theatre if ever there was one, Mlle. Carmen should temper her passions!
Audiences from the second night onwards were much kinder, but the damage had been done. Although the opera had a 48 performance run, most of the audiences were papered or ‘comped’; they did not pay for their tickets. Bizet died three months later of a heart attack, in June of 1875, brought on by a debilitating throat condition. He was 36 years old and thought his masterpiece to be a complete failure. A few months later the opera was produced in Vienna. A student of Bizet, Ernest Guiraud, provided sung accompanied recitatives to replace the spoken dialogue, and Carmen was reborn as grand, tragic opera. It hasn’t left the active repertoire since.