The doors of the arena swing open. Acclaiming the prowess of Escamillo, out pours the crowd, suddenly to halt, hushed and horror-stricken, at the body of a woman dead at the foot of the steps.
"I am your prisoner," says Don José to an officer. "I killed her." Then, throwing himself over the body, he cries:
"Carmen!—Carmen! I love you!—Speak to me!—I adore you!"
At its production at the Opéra Comique, "Carmen" was a failure. In view of the world-wide popularity the work was to achieve, that failure has become historic. It had, however, one lamentable result. Bizet, utterly depressed and discouraged, died exactly three months after the production, and before he could have had so much as an inkling of the success "Carmen" was to obtain. It was not until four months after his death that the opera, produced in Vienna, celebrated its first triumph. Then came Brussels, London, New York. At last, in 1883, "Carmen" was brought back to Paris for what Pierre Berton calls "the brilliant reparation." But Bizet, mortally wounded in his pride as an artist, had died disconsolate. The "reparation" was to the public, not to him.
Whoever will take the trouble to read extracts from the reviews in the Paris press of the first performance of "Carmen" will find that the score of this opera, so full of well-rounded, individual, and distinctive melodies—ensemble, concerted, and solo—was considered too Wagnerian. More than one trace of this curious attitude toward an opera, in which the melodies, or tunes, if you choose so to call them, crowd upon each other almost as closely as in "Il Trovatore," and certainly are as numerous as in "Aïda," still can be found in the article on "Carmen" in the Dictionnaire des Opéras, one of the most unsatisfactory essays in that work. Nor, speaking with the authority of Berton, who saw the second performance, was the failure due to defects in the cast. He speaks of Galli-Marié (Carmen), Chapuis (Micaela), Lherie (Don José), and Bouhy (Escamillo), as "equal to their tasks ... an admirable quartet."
America has had its Carmen periods. Minnie Hauck established an individuality in the rôle, which remained potent until the appearance in this country of Calvé. When Grau wanted to fill the house, all he had to do was to announce Calvé as Carmen. She so dominated the character with her beauty, charm, diablerie, and vocal art that, after she left the Metropolitan Opera House, it became impossible to revive the opera there with success, until Farrar made her appearance in it, November 19, 1914, with Alda as Micaela, Caruso as Don José, and Amato as Escamillo.
A season or two before Oscar Hammerstein gave "Carmen" at the Manhattan Opera House, a French company, which was on its last legs when it struck New York, appeared in a performance of "Carmen" at the Casino, and the next day went into bankruptcy. The Carmen was Bressler-Gianoli. Her interpretation brought out the coarse fibre in the character, and was so much the opposite of Calvé's, that it was interesting by contrast. It seemed that had the company been able to survive, "Carmen" could have been featured in its repertoire, by reason of Bressler-Gianoli's grasp of the character as Mérimée had drawn it in his novel, where Carmen is of a much coarser personality than in the opera. The day after the performance I went to see Heinrich Conried, then director of the Metropolitan Opera House, and told him of the impression she had made, but he did not engage her. The Carmen of Bressler-Gianoli (with Dalmorès, Trentini, Ancona, and Gilibert) was one of the principal successes of the Manhattan Opera House. It was first given December 14, 1906, and scored the record for the season with nineteen performances, "Aïda" coming next with twelve, and "Rigoletto" with eleven.