From Pierre-Auguste Lamy's famous series of lithographs, Act I of Carmen as given at its (not very happy) 1875 premiere at the Opéra-Comique
[fate motif at 2:13; start of Act I c3:37; Micaëla's entrance c5:33] Claude Calès (b), Moralès; Andréa Guiot (s), Micaëla; Chorus and Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), Georges Prêtre, cond. EMI, recorded July 1964
[Note: There are English texts for the whole scene farther down in the post.]
by Ken
Huh? "Rita Gorr sings Gluck?" You may wonder, what ever is he on about now?
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| Georges Prêtre around this time |
OKAY, OKAY, I KNOW I SHUT DOWN LAST WEEK . . .
. . . before delivering the promised continuation-to-ocompletion of that post. My bad. I don't think it would help if I tried to explain, so I'm not going to try. What we were heading for was a better appreciation of how extraordinary an achievement it is to be sprung to stardom in part by a role as seemingly unprepossessing as mousy Micaëla. In larger terms, I thought it was important to get a better feeling for the scope of Bizet's musico-dramatic canvas.
I'm really still not ready to advance the case, and really we're not adding any new Freni this week, since we already heard her recordings of the tiny but wonderful little scene in which we the audience are introduced, shortly after the rise of the Act I curtain, to this still-unnamed sweet, shy 17-year-old Basque girl.
So what are we going to hear which we didn't hear last week? Two things:
• Perhaps most importantly, some proper context. We're going to hear this little scene this week as we encounter it in the opera. Meaning we're going to hear, for one thing, how the soldiers' brief encounter with our mystery girl fits into their occupation of the moment, which is, as the commander of this little guard company himself puts it, smoking, chatting, and watching all the passersby on this square in Seville -- before Micaëla enters and after she so abruptly vamooses. More dramatically, of course we're hearing the first music the audience does when the house lights go down: first the Prélude, which has one of the most memorable, grabbing openings in all of music, in the form of the music eventually associated with the entry of the toreadors preceding the big bullfight in the final act; later segues into a first statement of one of the handful of the most celebrated songs in the operatic literature, the "Toreador Song," the toreador Escamillo's toast to his worshipful fans in Act II.
But Bizet still isn't ready to bring the curtain up. Once the Prélude has released its hold on us, after a pause comes something completely different: an orchestral statement of enormous power and unmistakable menace, commonly referred to as the "fate motif," which, as you may guess, we hear again at several strategic points in the opera. Then it's finally time to start the opera, and we're with our lollygagging soldiers people-watching on this Andalusian square, a clearly different world with no audible connection to what we've heard before
This is, all told, barely 10 minutes' worth of music; only one of our performances overshoots that mark (though it may be the most remarkable, and certainly the most interesting -- we'll come back to it). What an extraordinary emotional journey Bizet guides us through in that mere 10 minutes!
• Speaking of "our performances," that's the other thing we're going to hear: other performances. I like to think that even in these surroundings, the specialness of Freni is going to make its mark. But I think our assortment of performances is also going to open us up to some of the magnitude of Bizet's accomplishment.
BIZET: Carmen: Prélude through Moralès-Micaëla scene
A square in Seville. At right the entrance to the tobacco factory. At left the guardhouse. MORALÈS and the soldiers are grouped in front of the guardhouse. People are strolling about the square.
SOLDIERS: On the square, each one passes
[note rhyme of "place" ("square") and "passe" ("passes")],
each one comes, each one goes;
funny people, those people there.
MORALÈS: At the door of the guardhouse,
to kill time,
one smokes, one chats,
and one looks at the passersby passing.
SOLDIERS: On the square, each one passes, etc.
Funny people, those people there.
MORALÈS [overlapping]: Funny people! Funny people!
SOLDIERS:
MORALÈS:
SOLDIERS:
[MICAËLA appears. Hesitant, embarrassed, she looks at the soldiers, advances, retreats, etc.]
MORALÈS: Now look at this little lady
who seems to want to speak to us.
See, see! She turns, she hesitates . . .
SOLDIERS: To her aid we must go!
MORALÈS [chivalrous]: What are you looking for, lovely lady?
MICAËLA: Me, I'm looking for a sergeant.
MORALÈS [with emphasis]: That's me . . . here I am!
MICAËLA: My sergeant is named Don José . . .
[lightly] do you know him?
MORALÈS [light]: Don José? We all know him.
MICAËLA [with joy]: Really? Is he with you, please?
MORALÈS [with elegance]: He's not a sergeant in our company.
MICAËLA [disconsolate]: Then he's not here.
MORALÈS: No, my charmer, no, my charmer, he's not here,
but in just a bit he will be here, yes, in just a bit he'll be here.
[light but strongly rhythmic] He'll be here when the incoming guard comes to replace the outgoing guard.
SOLDIERS: He'll be here when the incoming guard
comes to replace the outgoing guard.
MORALÈS [very chivalrous]: But while waiting for him to come,
would you, beautiful child, would you be so kind
as to enter our place for a moment?
MICAËLA [frightened]: Your place?
MORALÈS and SOLDIERS: Our place.
MICAËLA [frightened]: Your place?
MORALÈS and SOLDIERS: Our place.
MICAËLA [delicately]: Oh no, oh no, many thanks, kind soldiers.
MORALÈS: Enter without fear, darling.
I promise you that we'll show for your dear self
all the consideration that's required.
MICAËLA: I don't doubt it. However,
I will return. I will return, it's more prudent!
I will return when the incoming guard
replaces the outgoing guard.
[delicately] I will return when the incoming guard
replaces the outgoing guard.
MORALÈS and SOLDIERS [overlapping]: You have to stay, for the incoming guard is going to replace the outgoing guard.
MORALÈS: You will stay.
MICAËLA: No, no!
MORALÈS and SOLDIERS [overlapping, surrounding her]: You will stay.
MICAËLA: Goodbye, kind soldiers!
[fate motif c2:13; start of Act I c3:22; Micaëla's entrance c5:21] Bernard Demigny (b), Moralès; Mirella Freni (s), Micaëla; Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. RCA, recorded November 1963
[fate motif c2:07; start of Act I c3:28; Micaëla's entrance c5:15] Claude Meloni (b), Moralès; Mirella Freni (s), Micaëla; Chorus and Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, cond. EMI, recorded mostly in July 1969
[fate motif c2:13; start of Act I c3:21; Micaëla's entrance c4:36] Nicolas Rivenq (b), Moralès; Mirella Freni (s), Micaëla; Chorus of Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded July 13-22, 1988
[fate motif c2:35; start of Act I c4:18; Micaëla's entrance c6:16] Raymond Gibbs (b), Moralès; Adriana Maliponte (s), Micaëla; Manhattan Opera Chorus, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded Sept.-Oct. 1973
[fate motif at 2:11; start of Act I c3:33; Micaëla's entrance c5:28] Julien Tirache (b), Moralès; Martha Angelici (s), Micaëla; Chorus and Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique, André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded Sept. 6-8, 1950
A SIDE NOTE ABOUT THE 1973 DG MORALÈSThere are all sorts of things to note along the way. The 1963 Karajan Carmen is a recording we've come back to frequently over the years -- and it is in fact a recording I come back to a lot for my own listening. Karajan clearly loved the opera, which threaded through his career, and for me this performance has a distinctive strength as well as precision in the detailing. Yes, it uses Guiraud's now nearly universally discredited edition, in which the opera's considerable spoken dialogue was replaced with orchestra-accompanied recitatives, which accomplished the significant immediate objective of making the opera more performable, especially in non-French-speaking lands, but at the cost of some significant distortions of various kinds. (Karajan clung to Guiraud as long as he reasonably could, but did eventually rerecord Carmen with spoken dialogue instead of the recitatives.)
Since this is one of the rare instances where you may find yourself dipped into a discussion that focuses on the role of Moralès, we should note the interesting case of the (very good) Morales of the 1973 Met recording, Raymond Gibbs. I've identified him as a baritone, which is what he was, or at least had been, at the time. However, though he'd been singing Moralès at the Met since 1970, by September-October 1973, when the DG Carmen was recorded, he'd already begun singing tenor roles there. (Gibbs, by the way, is one of many subjects of John White's The Baritone to Tenor Transition, a 2018 University of Southern Mississippi doctoral-dissertation submission, which you can find online here. As an interviewee, he spoke to the author both as a 1970s baritone-to-tenor transitioner and as, later, a voice teacher.)
So Karajan's 1963 recording is obviously a "grand opera" Carmen. Yet much the grandest performance we've heard is the Bernstein-DG, which was based on the Met production Lenny B conducted using spoken dialogue. But I've never heard anyone raise the dramatic stakes of the opera higher -- at his tempo, the Prélude has a momentum that makes other performances sound lightweight. (Bernstein, we should note, has not just the previously noted a strong Moralès in Raymond Gibbs, but a winning Micaëla in Adriana Maliponte, a nice singer who didn't make a lot of recordings.)
At the same time, I quite love the 1950 Cluytens-EMI recording, which is not only an "opéra-comique" Carmen in the sense that -- most unusually for the time -- it uses the spoken dialogue; it's an actual Opéra-Comique enterprise. It has a fluent, intimate quality that a lot of people, myself included, have found winning. (It sure doesn't hurt to have a corps of singers who speak the language, and can enables us to hear how Bizet made sense of the text.) By the way, Cluytens has quite a lovely Moralès in Julien Tirache, and a Micaëla, Martha Angelici, who certainly grabs my attention -- not in quite the visceral way that Freni does, mangled French and all, but when she makes her abrupt exit, she definitely makes me want to hear more from the character. (We'll be hearing more of Angelici's Micaëla.)
Can performances as different as the Cluytens-EMI and Bernstein-DG both be right? And the Prêtre-EMI too, for that matter? Yeah, I think they can. In their different ways, I think they're all taking us inside Carmen.
AND NOW --
Rita Gorr sings Gluck
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| Gorr as Amneris in Aida |
You'll have to trust me that I wasn't trying to prove a point when I conjured Gorr's Amneris, Fricka, and Dalila, cornerstones of the Italian, German, and French dramatic-mezzo repertory. To my ears she was just that good. French, though, was her first language, and there was always something that much more special about her singing in her own language, even apart from the scarcity of singers of international caliber the Francophone world has produced going back, well, seemingly forever.
When I eyed that Gorr reissue CD, a Guild production that supplements her 1959 French-aria recital with generous excerpts she recorded for several single-LP representations of important French operas, two arias in particular called to me for rehearing, and it happened that they're both by Gluck.
If you wanted to argue there has never been a piece of vocal music more beautiful than Orpheus's "J'ai perdu mon Eurydice" (or, as it began life in Vienna, "Che farò senza Euridice"), you would get no argument from me. We have in fact spent a certain amount of time listening to it, but at that time I had the Gorr recording only on LP, and I guess I wasn't inclined to do a dub. And then there's that fiery showpiece, Alceste's "Divinités du Styx," her impassioned address to the gods of the Styx offering herself as a substitute for her dying husband. Both Orfeo/Orphée and Alceste are minefields of musicological complexity and confusion. We're going to bypass all of that and just (I hope) enjoy.
And maybe next week we get back to work.
GLUCK: Orphée et Eurydice: Act III, Recitative and aria, Orphée, "Malheureux, qu'ai-je fait?" . . . "J'ai perdu mon Eurydice"
[The gods, moved by Orpheus's despair at the death of his adored wife, have allowed him to venture into the underworld to bring her back to life, on condition that he not look at Euridice until they are back in the world of the living. He is so moved, however, by her despair over his refusal to look at her that, of course, he relents, with the expectably fatal result.]
Recitative
Unhappy man, what have I done?
And into what precipice has my fatal love plunged me?
Dear wife, Euridice! Euridice, dear wife!
She doesn't hear me any more.
I have lost her without return.
It's I who ravished her of day.
Fatal law! Cruel remorse!
My suffering is without equal
in this funereal moment.
Despair, death is all that remains for me.
Aria
I have lost my Euridice.
Nothing equals my unhappiness.
Cruel fate! What severity!
Nothing equals my unhappiness.
I succumb to my grief.
Euridice! Euridice, reply! What torture!
Answer me!
It's your faithful husband.
Hear my voice calling you.
I have lost my Euridice, etc.
Deadly silence,
vain hope, what suffering!
What torment tears at my heart!
I have lost my Euridice, etc.
GLUCK: Alceste: Act I, Aria, Alceste, "Divinités du Styx"
[Alceste, the queen of Thessaly, has learned from the oracle of Apollo that the only way her beloved husband, the king Admetus, who is lying near death, can be saved is if someone offers to take his place. She brings Act I to a rousing close with this declaration to the gods of the underworld, on the dark side of the river Styx.]
Divinities of the Styx, divinities of the Styx, ministers of death!
I will not invoke your cruel pity.
I abduct my husband from his funereal fate,
but I surrender to you a faithful wife.
Divinities of the Styx, ministers of death!
To die for one you love
is such a sweet effort,
a virtue so natural,
my heart is livened with the noblest transport!
I feel a new force,
I go where my love calls me,
my heart is livened with the noblest transport!
Divinities of the Styx, ministers of death!
I will not invoke your cruel pity.]
Rita Gorr, mezzo-soprano; Orchestra of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris), André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded June 1959
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