The Music of Spain

by Carl Van Vechten

At various times attempts have been made to prove that Carmen did not fail when it was first produced. The most notable of these is an article contributed to the "Ménestrel" (1903; p. 53) by Arthur Pougin entitled "La Légende de la Chute de Carmen et la Mort de Bizet" in which he quotes Mme. Galli-Marié: "L'insuccès de Carmen à la création, mais c'est une légende! Carmen n'est pas tombée au bout de quelques représentations, comme beaucoup le croient.... Nous l'avons jouée plus de quarante fois dans la saison, et quand ce pauvre Bizet est mort, le succes de son chef d'œuvre semblait definitivement assis."... Pigot scoffs at this, pointing out that the exigencies of the répertoire often make it necessary for a director to perform a work oftener than it will pay to do so. His evidence is cumulative and for the most part convincing.

According to H. Sutherland Edwards, who seems to have acquired this information from Marie Roze, in its original form the opera included two complete airs for Carmen which, in the end, the composer and his librettists decided to suppress. The gipsy was to have been represented as capable of remorse (!) and after the scene in which she foretells her death by the cards was to be left alone to give vent to her feelings in a pathetic air! The other omitted air occurred in the last act.

Mr. Edwards gives us more details: The bull-fight, according to the original design of the authors, was to be shown in the form of a tableau, occupying all the back of the stage with live chorus figures and "supers" in the front of the picture and painted figures behind them. Escamillo was to have been seen triumphing over the figure of the fallen bull, while the crowd of spectators overlooking the arena shouted vociferously the air of the Toreador. In a dark background (the back of the stage alone being illuminated) the figures of Carmen and Don José were to be seen.

Charles Pigot tells us that Micaela's song was composed originally for Griselidis (an opera for which Sardou supplied the book and which Bizet never completed). The score of Carmen would be perfect without it. The story of the Habanera is related elsewhere in this volume (p. 27), and need not be repeated here.

Carmen originally contained a good deal of spoken dialogue, which is still to be heard at the Paris Opéra-Comique. Guiraud (not Godard, as Clara Louise Kellogg has it) wrote the music for the recitatives and it is with these that the work is usually performed in foreign theatres, including the Metropolitan Opera House. In some theatres, however, a bastard version, a combination of these two forms, is given.

It is probable that Spaniards base their main objection to Carmen on the idealization of a national type offered by the libretto. It is not likely that they object to the music. At any rate they have always found Italian, French, and German music pleasant to their ears and many Spanish composers have been less Spanish than Bizet, who after all, was a Jew, and something of an oriental himself! The dances and some of the entr'acte music, then, of this opera may be considered thoroughly Spanish. But Spanish or not there is no denying that Bizet succeeded in writing one of the most delightful of operas. When I first read Nietzsche's "The Case of Wagner" I was inclined to feel that the German in his rage against Wagner had put up the silliest of opponents against him in order to make his ex-hero more ridiculous. I do not feel that way today. I humbly subscribe to all of Nietzsche's outpourings: "This music seems to me to be perfect. It approaches lightly, nimbly, and with courtesy. It is amiable, it does not produce sweat. 'What is good is easy; everything divine runs with light feet'—the first proposition of my Æsthetics. This music is wicked, subtle, and fatalistic; it remains popular at the same time,—it has the subtlety of a race, not of an individual. It is rich. It is precise.... It has borrowed from Mérimée the logic in passion, the shortest route, stern necessity. It possesses, above all, what belongs to the warm climate, the dryness of the air, its limpidezza.... This music is gay; but it has not a French or a German gaiety. Its gaiety is African; destiny hangs over it, its happiness is short, sudden, and without forgiveness." Has any one ever described Carmen so well? And there is much more. I pray you, turn to "The Case of Wagner" and read it all ... and perhaps begin to believe, as I do, that aside from Tristan Wagner himself never penned so complete a masterpiece.

Before we begin to glance at some of the ladies who have attempted to do justice to the Spanish gipsy it might be well to pause for a few seconds on two descriptions of the cigarrera type. Gautier visited the celebrated Fábrica de Tobacos in Seville, where Carmen was employed until she began to stick knives into her co-workers. Here is what he says of it:

"L'on nous conduisit aux ateliers où se roulent les cigares en feuilles. Cinq où six cents femmes sont employées à cette préparation. Quand nous mîmes le pied dans leur salle, nous fûmes assailis par un ouragan de bruits: elles parlaient, chantaient et se disputaient toutes à la fois. Je n'ai jamais entendu un vacarme pareil. Elles étaient jeunes pour la plupart, et il y en avait de fort jolies. Le négligé extrême de leur toilette permettait d'apprécier leurs charmes en toute liberté. Quelques-unes portaient résolûment à l'angle de leur bouche un bout de cigare avec l'aplomb d'un officier de hussards; d'autres, ô muse, viens à mon aide! d'autres ... chiquaient comme de vieux matelots, car on leur laisse prendre autant de tabac qu'elles en peuvent consommer sur place.... La cigarrera de Séville est un type, comme la manola de Madrid."

I also append Edmondo de Amicis's description: "The women are almost all in three immense rooms, divided into three parts, by three rows of pilasters. The first effect is stupendous. Eight hundred girls present themselves at once to your view. They are divided into groups of five or six, and are seated around work-tables, crowded together, those in the distance indistinct, and the last scarcely visible. They are all young, but few are children; in all, eight hundred dark heads of hair, and eight hundred dusky faces from every province of Andalusia, from Jaen to Cadiz, and from Granada to Seville. You hear the buzzing that you would in a square full of people. The walls, from one end of the three rooms to the other, are covered with skirts, shawls, handkerchiefs, and scarfs, and, curiously enough, the whole mass of rags, which would be sufficient to fill a hundred second-hand shops, presents two predominating colours, both continuous, one above the other, like the stripes of a flag. The black of the shawls is above, the red of the dresses below, and mixed with the latter, are white, purple, and yellow, so that you seem to see an immense fancy costume shop, or a large dancing-room, in which the ballet girls, in order to obtain more freedom of movement, have hung everything on the wall which is not absolutely necessary to cover them decently. The girls put on these dresses when they leave, but wear old things while at work, which, however, are white and red like the others. The heat being insupportable, they lighten their clothing as much as possible, so that among those five thousand there may be hardly fifty whose arms or shoulders the visitor will not have the opportunity of admiring at his leisure, without counting the exceptional cases which present themselves quite unexpectedly in passing from one room to the other, behind the doors, columns, or in distant corners. There are some very beautiful faces, and even those that are not absolutely beautiful, have something about them which attracts the eye and remains impressed upon the memory—the colouring, eyes, brows, and smile, for instance. Many, and especially the so-called gitane, are dark brown, like mulattoes, and have protruding lips; others have such large eyes that a faithful likeness of them would seem an exaggeration. The majority are small, well made, and all wear a rose, pink, or a bunch of field flowers among their braids."[3]

Mlle. Célestine Galli-Marié was the first Carmen. She is said to have been delightful, but the first interpreter of a part always has an advantage over those who follow her; she need not fear comparison. She was charged with immorality but it is not likely that she allowed herself as many gipsy liberties as some of her successors. Charles Pigot tells us that she took advantage of Mérimée's vigorous etching: "elle avait pris modèle sur ce portrait d'une ressemblance qui donne le frisson de la vie au personnage évoqué. Oeillades assassines, regards chargés de volupté qui livrent la victime pieds et poings liés, déhanchements lascifs, poings sur la hanche, rien ne manquait à la ressemblance; et ce déploiement de perversités physiques, refletant à merveille l'âme de cette bohémienne ehontée, cette crudité de tons dans le rendu du geste et de l'allure qui choquèrent bien des personnes et firent crier a l'immoralité, étaient indiqués par l'effronterie du personnage, et, j'ajouterai, nécessaires à la verité du drame, à l'explication de l'ensorcellement subit du navarrais."