The “Fatality” Motif – a Defining Element in the Musical Dramaturgy of the Opera Carmen by Georges Bizet

"The subject of this study deals with the presence of the “fatality” motif in the musical dramaturgy of Bizet’s opera Carmen. A musical portrait of the main character, it defines from the very beginning her tragic destiny. The present analytical approach identifies all the insertions of this musical motif along the development of the dramatic plot, in an intrinsic relationship with the text. Keywords: Bizet, Carmen, opera, fatality, musical dramaturgy "

Offenbach, Pépito and the Théâtre des Variétés: Politics and Genre in the First Year of the Second Empire

Offenbach's first commercially performed dramatic work, the opéra comique Pépito, premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Variétés on 28 October 1853. This article examines it from historical and musical perspectives. First, I argue that its production at the Théâtre des Variétés is an example of what Mark Everist has called ‘the politics of genre’, in this case the attempts by managers of Parisian boulevard theatres to circumvent the hierarchical system of genre imposed on them by the government. Offenbach may have been directly complicit by offering an opéra comique to a theatre that was legally not allowed to perform the genre and by supplying a musical element – ‘local colour’ – as part of the political strategy by which the manager of the Variétés sneaked the opéra comique past the authorities. The subterfuge did not work, however: I argue that Pépito was recognised by audiences as an opéra comique primarily through the character of its music. A discussion of the score, and the musical competence of the original cast and orchestra of the Variétés, allows a partial reconstruction of the actual sound of the first performance of Pépito. Finally, I consider the later history of Pépito, and in a postscript suggest that a faint memory of Offenbach's Spanish opéra comique may have resurfaced twenty-two years later when Georges Bizet, who became part of Offenbach's circle in the late 1850s, was composing his own Spanish opéra comique, Carmen.

Critical Allusion and Critical Assessment: Berlioz's and Reyer's Reviews of Bizet in the Journal des débats

Respected as one of four ‘feuilles de qualité’ in nineteenth-century France, the Journal des débats politiques et littéraires published articles by some of the most talented writers/critics of its time. In ‘feuilletons’, large articles that ran across the bottom of the first and second pages, these authors gave perceptive critiques in high-quality prose and provided their readers with relief from the political news discussed on the page above. In January 1858 literary critic Hippolyte Rigault asserted that modern criticism communicated not just through forthright judgements but also through innuendo and nuance. A sophisticated readership could then be expected to take up the task of understanding the allusions and filling in the blanks. Like Rigault, Hector Berlioz (music critic of the Débats from 1835 to 1863) and Ernest Reyer (from 1866 to 1898) used both text and subtext to convey their assessments. This study, with the goal of examining how shades of approval and disapproval could be alluded to or directly revealed, traces how they wrote about their younger contemporary Georges Bizet in the years following Rigault's article.

An Analysis of the Repertoire Performed by Youth Orchestras in the United States

The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of repertoire performed by youth orchestras in the United States. Through an online survey, youth orchestra administrators ( N = 39) provided information about repertoire performed by their program’s premier orchestra during their 2015-2016 season. Orchestras performed 302 different pieces of music by 158 different composers. The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, Carmen Suite No. 1 by Georges Bizet, and Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture by Mikhail Glinka were performed most frequently. Approximately three quarters of all compositions were written after 1850, and only 7.14% were composed after 2000. Compositions by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and Brahms were the most frequently performed, and female composers only wrote 0.78% of the repertoire performed by youth orchestras during their 2015-2016 season. Conductors should use these findings as an impetus to identify culturally diverse repertoire appropriate for youth orchestras by non-male composers.

Cave carmen: o uso da habanera na abertura Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, de Fernando Lopes-Graça

Apresento, neste artigo, uma análise da abertura sinfônica Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (1963), do compositor português Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906-1994), inspirada no romance homônimo de Jorge Amado. Destaco alguns aspectos da relação entre a ambientação no romance e na música, tomando como ferramenta de análise a identificação de tópicas. Partindo das categorias de relações transtextuais de Gérard Genette (1982, 1987) e de sua adaptação à análise musical por Paulo Ferreira de Castro (2015), abordo o uso do padrão rítmico da habanera como elemento estruturador da partitura e, mais especificamente, do motivo Prends garde à toi! entoado pelo coro na Habanera da ópera Carmen, de Georges Bizet, destacando o paralelo entre as características de sensualidade e liberdade associadas às duas personagens. Acrescentando a ingenuidade e a espontaneidade infantil de Gabriela, associo estas características ao que identifico como tópicas circenses e pastorais, estas últimas também observadas na análise literária de José Paulo Paes (2012) e relacionadas por este autor aos conceitos de “bom selvagem” e “criança-juiz”. Tomando como base as análises de Carmen por Susan McClary (2002) e de Gabriela na nota de encarte de João de Freitas Branco (1967), discuto a ideia de “morte necessária” da mulher que foge às expectativas morais e sociais e sua subversão por Amado e Lopes-Graça, esta realizada musicalmente a partir do recurso de anticlímax. Aponto brevemente, por fim, a questão da presença e a pertinência do exotismo na abordagem musical de Gabriela, a partir de sua associação ao erotismo e do uso do tresillo.

The Spains of Paris, Mérimée, and Bizet’s Carmen

The Prelude briefly situates the creation of Carmen within a long tradition of Spanish entertainment in Paris, from its incarnation as a novella by Prosper Mérimée (in the 1840s) to the opera by Georges Bizet and his librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy (1875). The fashions of the Second Empire; the influence of the Spanish-born Empress Eugénie, who fostered a taste for Spanish music and dance; and the growing community of Spanish performers and artists in Paris formed a cultural landscape that informed the local color of the opera. This Hispanic milieu in the French capital also conditioned and shaped Bizet’s musical depiction of Spain in Carmen.

Preference Dimensions of the Estonian Opera-Consumer: A Comparison of the Audiences at Opera Houses and Mediated Opera Performances

This article presents the results of a study in which the Estonian audiences of various stage versions of the same opera (live opera theatre performance and live-in-HD, which were shown at cinemas) during the same season were compared in a social constructivist paradigm to underline whether, and to what extent, audiences’ membership, cultural consumption preferences, attitudes, expectations, values and perceptions differ or coincide, thereby revealing what audiences distinguish as the differences or similarities between live and mediated opera performances. It presents the preference dimensions of the Estonian opera audience and provides an opportunity to discuss the issue of whether a technologically mediated cultural event offers any new opportunities for traditional opera to expand its audience, or whether it captures the audiences and creates competition for the theatres whose performances are not mediated. The survey was carried out among audiences attending performances of Carmen (Georges Bizet, 1875) in the 2014/2015 season at five different venues in Estonia. The findings revealed that, due to the fact that the hierarchy of motivators for the target groups of live and live-in-HD opera differs, it does not support the idea that opera theatre will gain new audiences from cinema or vice versa.