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The shouts of the people in the arena announce another victory for Escamillo. She cries out with joy. Don José springs at her like a tiger, and stabs her just as Escamillo emerges from the contest. Carmen is the largest and best-considered of all Bizet's works, and one of the best in the modern French repertory. The overture is short but very brilliant.
Sit right where you are no, fix the attachment to the organ while I'm gone. Oh, be gay with me to-night," she cried, throwing her arms around him. "This is my night, isn't it? And I am to be just as foolish as I please." With the words she ran from the room, but was back in an incredibly short time, gowned as Bizet's cigarette girl, a red rose in her black hair, castanets upon her fingers.
Thomas employs several charming old Scandinavian tunes in the course of the work, which give a clever tinge of local colour to the score. 'Les Pêcheurs de Perles' , his first work, follows traditional models pretty closely for the most part, and though containing music of charm and originality, does not, of course, represent Bizet's genius in its most characteristic aspects.
The color of the whole work is Spanish, and the dance tempo is freely used and beautifully worked up with Bizet's ingenious and scholarly instrumentation. Except in the third act, however, the vocal parts are inferior to the orchestral treatment. François Adrien Boieldieu was born Dec. 16, 1775, at Rouen, France.
The catalogue of Bizet's works is completed by 'Don Procopio, an imitation of Italian opera buffa dating from his student days in Rome. It was unearthed and produced at Monte Carlo in 1906. It is a bright and lively little work, but has no pretensions to original value. Bizet's early death deprived the French school of one of its brightest ornaments.
"Well then, come to the Teatro Real with me. They're going to give the divine Bizet's Carmen, and Nasi and Pacteschi are going to sing. Enough said!" Candelas accepted. "And now," said Alicia, "I want to go home, to see if any important message has come. Then I'll take you home, dear. You can change your dress and we'll go get Manuel, so he'll invite us out to supper."
Then, there is another flock, a flock of girls, victims of the Chimera, walking with a nimble, a prancing step, with music scores under their arms, on the way to the maestro's; slender, light-haired English misses, who want to become prima donnas of comic opera; fair-skinned, buxom Russian parishnas who greet their acquaintances with the sweeping bow of a dramatic soprano; Spanish señoritas of bold faces and free manners, preparing for stage careers as Bizet's cigarette-girl frivolous, sonorous song-birds nesting hundreds of leagues away, and who have flown hither dazzled by the tinsel of glory.
It is a clever study in Oriental colour, but has little dramatic value, though it was thought very advanced at the time of its production. In 1875, the year of Bizet's death, 'Carmen' was produced. The libretto is founded upon Mérimée's famous novel. Carmen, a sensual and passionate gipsy girl, is arrested for stabbing one of her comrades in a cigarette manufactory at Seville.
Its passionate force was miscalled brutality, and the suspicion of German influence which Bizet's clever use of guiding themes excited, was in itself enough to alienate the sympathies of the average Frenchman in the early seventies. Since its production 'Carmen' has gradually advanced in general estimation, and is now one of the most popular operas in the modern repertory.
The Conservatoire, which was formerly more hospitable, rather reluctantly performed a portion of L'Enfance du Christ; but it gave young composers no encouragement. There he had performed Mendelssohn's Symphonie Italienne, the overtures to Tannhäuser and Manfred, Berlioz's Fuite en Égypte, and Gounod's and Bizet's early, works. But lack of money cut short his efforts. Pasdeloup took up the work.
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