Carmen: Sounds Of Spain

The path to Carmen, Bizet’s masterpiece, involved numerous other operas, through which he developed the profound understanding of musical theater which Carmen so clearly displays. It premiered in Paris on March 3, 1875. The savagely negative reviews ensured that it gradually dropped from sight. Its ascent to worldwide popularity began in the autumn of that year, with the triumphant success of the first production in Vienna. Alas for Bizet, since by then he had died, just 37.

Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy based their libretto on the story by Prosper Merimée. The action takes place in and around Seville, Spain, during the 1820s. Carmen is a heartless gypsy who seduces and abandons Don José, a weak-willed soldier. In a fit of jealous rage, he kills her. The brilliantly scored orchestral selections you will hear at this concert vividly evoke the opera’s sultry setting, dramatic events, and vibrant characters, who include gypsies, toreadors, soldiers and street urchins. The suite was prepared after Bizet’s death, most likely by his friend Ernest Guiraud.

Program Notes © 2019 Don Anderson

Falla rarely quoted authentic Spanish folk materials. This suite is a partial exception. He created it in 1914, as a work for voice and piano. It’s a synthesis of arrangement and composition. Most of the melodies are indeed popular in origin. Others, such as the Jota, are almost entirely his own creations. The suite draws on musical forms from many regions of Spain, from Andalusia to Aragon. In mood the selections range from laments and lullabies (Asturiana and Nana, respectively) to the concluding Polo, a fiery piece in Gypsy Flamenco style. Several transcriptions of this exotic music exist, for violin and piano, for example. In 1978, the versatile Italian composer Luciano Berio created this version with a stylistically appropriate orchestral accompaniment.

Program Notes © 2019 Don Anderson

In 1911, Granados composed his most famous piano piece, a suite called Goyescas. It was inspired by the vivid paintings in which the celebrated Spanish artist, Francisco Goya (1746-1818), had depicted the society and landscapes of his homeland. American pianist Ernest Schelling suggested that Granados use it as the basis for an opera. Granados and author Fernando Periquet created the dramatic form, Granados composed the music (founded upon, and expanded from, the piano suite), and Periquet fitted a final libretto to it. A one-act opera with a duration of an hour, Goyescas premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in January 1916. The plot is a typical operatic story of love, jealousy and revenge involving a group of young Spanish men and women. The passionate intermezzo is heard between the second and third of the opera’s three scenes.

Program Notes © 2019 Don Anderson

In 1882, Chabrier and his wife traveled to Spain. He used the folk music he heard as the basis for this boisterous rhapsody. Originally a piano solo, he prepared a transcription for orchestra, where its innate colour could expand to its full, natural limits.

Program Notes © 2019 Don Anderson

In 1916, Falla composed a score for a stage pantomime based on Pedro de Alarcón’s novel The Corregidor and The Miller’s Wife. Sergei Diaghilev, artistic director of the renowned dance company Les Ballets russes (Russian Ballet), heard it during a visit to Madrid. He suggested that Falla expand it into a full-scale ballet, and the composer agreed eagerly. In addition to Falla and Diaghilev, the new piece, re-christened The Three-Cornered Hat, involved a first-rate line-up of talent. Léonide Massine created the choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the curtain, sets and costumes. Massine took lessons in flamenco, a Spanish style of folk dancing, in order to absorb it into his choreography, and drew upon bullfighting for other elements. Picasso’s design for the curtain proved so striking – a bullfight pictured in yellow, pink, blue, white and grey – that Falla added a brief prelude to the score in order to show it off.

Shortly before the premiere, disaster struck twice. Felix Fernando Garcia, whom Diaghilev had discovered in a back street café in Madrid and recruited to dance the lead role, took ill. Massine replaced him. Falla had planned to conduct the premiere, but he was summoned to his mother’s deathbed on short notice; Ernest Ansermet stepped in. Despite these setbacks, The Three-Cornered Hat could hardly miss. Its premiere scored a sensational success. At the post-debut party, renowned pianist Artur Rubinstein entertained, and Picasso drew a wreath on top of Falla’s bald head with the hostess’s eyebrow pencil.

The story of the ballet is set in the Spanish countryside. The principal characters are a miller and his wife, plus the Corregidor, a local official whose three-cornered hat symbolizes his rude, snobbish nature. The Corregidor sets his sights on the miller’s beautiful wife. His clumsy efforts at courting her come to nothing, however, and the couple resumes its happy life. The full score, as performed at these concerts, includes a role for female singer that adds extra spice to this vivid, animated music’s heady Spanish atmosphere.

Program Notes © 2019 Don Anderson