Sense and Sound in Oeovges Bizel's Cavnen

AulIov|s) JudilI NovinsIi

Bevieved vovI|s)
Souvce TIe FvencI Beviev, VoI. 43, No. 6 |Ma, 1970), pp. 891-900
FuIIisIed I American Association of Teachers of French
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THE FRENCH REVIEW,
Vol. XLIII, No. 6, May,
1970 Printed in U.S.A.
Sense and Sound in
Georges
Bizet's
Carmen
by
Judith
Nowinski
THE APPROACHING CENTENARY of Bizet's
opera, Carmen, may
be the
ap-
propriate
moment for a reexamination of this
operatic interpretation
of
Prosper
Merimee's short
story,
and of certain
popular misconceptions
connected therewith. The
timing
of this review would seem to be
par-
ticularly apt,
since Jean-Louis Barrault is
currently presenting
his own
production
of Carmen at the
Metropolitan Opera
House in New
York;
and,
back in
early 1960,
Andre
Malraux,
as
part
of his
program
to re-
vitalize the French
Arts, singled
out this
opera
for extensive
restaging
and
filming.
Few
people
are aware of the fact that the Carmen we know
today
is
not that of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic
Halevy, traditionally
credited
with the libretto.
Rather,
it is the version reworked
by Georges Bizet,
who felt that neither Meilhac nor
Halevy actually
understood Meri-
mee's
tale,
and that
they
had thus distorted the
original meaning
and
esthetics. The
composer, therefore,
introduced several
major,
critical
changes, rearranging sequence
and
composing
his own verse lines of
certain
key passages
in the
opera. Why
did Bizet
repudiate,
in a man-
ner of
speaking,
his librettists' version of the Merimee text? What
spe-
cial
meaning
did he sense had eluded Meilhac
and
Halevy?
This
essay
is an
attempt
to answer these
questions.
We must
begin by considering
the differences between literature and
music. A
literary
work is
composed
of form and
subject matter;
a musi-
cal
composition, particularly
an
opera,
while
including
these two ele-
ments,
also contains other dimensions-melodic
material, rhythmic
values, tonality
and orchestration. Each idiom
employs
distinct
tools,
so that as a
literary subject
is transformed into
music,
the contents will
emerge
somewhat altered. To illustrate:
opera,
as a matter of conven-
tion,
demands solo
voices..,
.a
soprano, contralto,
tenor and bass in
primary roles;
there are vocal combinations of these four
timbres,
a
chorus,
orchestral interludes and
accompaniments.
The
heroine,
Car-
men,
conceived
by
the
composer
as a
contralto, needed the
light, lyric
891
892 FRENCH REVIEW
quality
of a
soprano
voice as a foil. Merimee's
gypsy
had no female ri-
val,
so that Bizet felt
obliged
to invent one: Micaela.
There is another attribute which isolates literature from music.
By
its
very nature,
the written word communicates more
directly
than
does its vocal
equivalent.
This factor is
especially
crucial in
Merimie
whose
prose style
is a model of
condensation, precision, sobriety
and
understatement.
Inevitably,
Bizet's
protagonists appear
redundant and
verbose in
comparison
with their
literary counterparts.
We
might say, then,
that
fundamentally,
the realm of form
separates
prose
from
music;
the written
word,
to
project,
is
expanded
when
sung;
there is a
specific prose style typical
of Merimee which Bizet
sought
to
retain,
both in versification and in musical
composition.
The
proof
that
he succeeded in his aim to minimize the natural
dichotomy
between
prose
and music is seen in the fact that Carmen
may
well be the
only
opera
in which cuts have never been
attempted,
either in concert or in
dramatic
performance.
Here it is
necessary
to
digress briefly,
in order to
present
the esthetic
traditions of both Bizet and
Merimee,
as well as to
give
an idea of the
contemporary background against
which Meilhac and
Halevy
first set
the short
story
into verse.
Bizet,
a Parisian like
Merimee,
but
thirty-five years
his
junior (as
far as is
known,
their
paths
never
crossed!),
was born into a musical
family.
His
mother,
a
pianist,
his
father,
a vocal
coach,
and his
uncles,
well-known
singers, each,
in
turn, taught Georges piano,
voice and har-
mony. Accepted
at the Conservatoire at the
unusually early age
of nine
years,
he studied
composition
with Fromenthal
Halevy, composer
of La
Juive, among
other
operas,
and whose
daughter
Genevieive,
was to be-
come his wife. This
exceedingly
literate man made a
profound impres-
sion on Bizet: he was influential in
developing
his instinct for
poetry.
Bizet is
quoted by
his most recent
biographer,
Mina
Curtiss,
as
having
said to one of his own
pupils: "People
think
you
don't have to be well-
read to be a musician. You
must,
on the
contrary,
have a
very
broad
knowledge
of
things."'
This attitude of Bizet's is most
significant
in
terms of his later versification and
understanding
of Merimee's work.
An elusive heroine like the novelist's
gypsy
had
long intrigued
the com-
poser.
An earlier
work, Djamileh
was
inspired by
an
Epigraph
in Mus-
set's Namouna: "Une femme est comme votre
ombre/Courez
apres,
'Bizet and His World
(New
York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1958), p.
151.
Subsequent
refer-
ences from this volume will henceforth be indicated
immediately following
the
quoted
material.
BIZET
893
elle vous
fuit/Fuyez-la,
elle court
apres
vous." He would use this motif
in Carmen's habanera verse. And
later,
when
setting
to music Daudet's
L'Arlesienne,
Bizet once
again
demonstrated his attraction for fatal
love as
subject matter;
in the
closing
moments of
Carmen,
Don Jose
would
express
his
jealous rage
in terms which recall a line Bizet him-
self had added to the
script
of Daudet's
play.
Merimee,
whose
parents
were both
painters, grew up
in a household
which was
markedly anglophile.
He met
many
British
painters
and
writers
throughout
his
childhood,
and he was
taught English
at an
early
age.
His father
Leonor, pupil
of David and
Vincent,
wrote an
erudite,
definitive text on classical
painting
in a
style
which seems to have had
a
strong
influence on
Prosper's
own in later
years.
One
biographer
as-
serts that his
parents, although artists,
"were
people
in whom no flame
burned,
no enthusiasms were
generated."2
His first visit to
Spain
took
place
in
1830,
but there is evidence that Carmen
germinated
in its crea-
tor's subconscious
prior
to that date. In
May 1825,
he
published
Le
Theatre de Clara
Gazul,
a
masterpiece
of ironic
parody,
whose central
character-a
Spanish
actress-strums the
guitar
to
accompany
her
gypsy songs,
and whose
physical appearance
foreshadows that of Car-
men.
Subsequent works,
La Femme est
un diable,
L'Amour
africain,
L'Occasion,
all contain
germinal
elements of the future
Carmen,
Don
Jose and others.
Meilhac and
Halevy
were a
prolific
team. In addition to their
many
operetta adaptations,
two of their own one-act comedies had their
pre-
mieres almost
simultaneously
with the
opening
rehearsals of Carmen.
Thus,
the authors were far too
busy
elsewhere to
give
the
opera
much
attention. Meilhac was a bon
vivant,
an
expert
at
billiards,
whist and
ecarte, games
at which Bizet
generally
beat him. He had
originally
been a
bookseller,
but he was not an intellectual.
Summarizing
his con-
tributions to
Carmen,
Curtiss
suggests
that his touch can be
readily
identified in the treatment of the chief
smugglers,
Le Dancalre and Le
Remendado,
"whose
amusing horseplay
is
typical
of traditional vaude-
ville farce." Meilhac had once sketeched and written for humorous
mag-
azines;
his
primary gift
was for characterization in this vein. This is
why
Mina Curtiss
suspects
that he
composed
the verses for the
Quintet
in Act
II, during
which her
smuggler
cronies mock Carmen. when she re-
fuses to leave with them because she has fallen in love. Meilhac "de-
rived no
pleasure
from
music,"
writes
Curtiss,
but "he was
loyally
de-
2
Robert Baschet, Du Romantisme au Second
Empire:
Merimee
(Paris:
Nouvelles
Editions
Latines, 1958), p.
12.
894 FRENCH REVIEW
voted to Bizet"
(p. 378).
When he did attend rehearsals of
Carmen,
he
stayed just long enough
to
suggest
a word or a
line; then, restless,
he
would vanish.
Halevy's
most vital function was that of a buffer between the dedi-
cated
composer
and the hostile
management
of the
Opera-Comique.
Stylistically,
his contribution to Carmen is
exemplified by
the
bantering
tone of the habanera.
How
startling
it is to read the libretto for Carmen in Volume VII of
the Theatre de
Meilhac
et
Halevy!
This
piece
is
very
different from
the
opera
we are accustomed to
seeing
on
stage.
For
example, imitating
the
superficial technique
heretofore reserved for their own
operettas,
the librettists introduced a trivial sketch to
precede
the arrival of Don
Jose's regiment:
a discordant
froth,
a skeleton love
triangle,
a
phantom
"menage
a trois" strikes one as
incongruous
and
paradoxical
in view of
the
setting,
"En
Espagne-Vers
1820."
Bizet, subsequently, rejected
this
scene from his version of the
opera
as alien to Merimee's
story,
and re-
placed
it with a melodic interlude which he viewed as far more suitable.
A band of
picturesque
urchins
arrives, strutting onstage
in mock-heroic
imitation of the real
thing,
and this becomes the
prelude
for the fanfare
accompanying
the
changing
of the
guards.
This kind of dramatization
is
decidedly
related to the
spirit
of Merimee's
hero, particularly
in the
self-righteous
attachment he exhibits towards his
military
duties.
When the
composer
was commissioned
by
the
Opera-Comique,
for
which he wrote
Carmen,
he told one of the directors: "Meilhac and
Halevy
will be
my collaborators.., they
will do me
something gay,
which I shall treat as
tightly
as
possible" (p.
329).
Bizet's underlined
words are to be
noted; they
define his
compositional aspirations
and
establish an unmistakeable bond between his
stylistics
and those of
Merimee.
Might
he have failed to mention that it was he himself who
had invited Meilhac and
Halevy
to work with him in the translation
of Carmen? It must be stressed that in a letter to his
mother, during
his
stay
in
Italy
as a
Prix
de Rome
recipient, young Georges
had writ-
ten: "An
intelligent
musician should find the ideas for his librettos him-
self'
(p.
86).
In another
letter, deploring
a collaborator's verses as "so
absurd,"
he stated that at times he had to rewrite them: "If
necessary,
I could
get along
without a collaborator"
(p. 93).
Bizet was faced with a
major problem concerning
the
staging
of Car-
men. He had to consider the
predominant
mood of
opera
"fans" in his
era. A
good example
of this is the
following
conversation between Ludo-
vic
Halevy
and Camille de
Locle,
Co-Director of the
opera house,
with
BIZET 895
de
Locle
pleading
not to have Carmen die on
stage:
"Death on the
stage
of the
Opera-Comique!
Such a
thing
has never been seen! Never!"
This,
he
continued,
was a theatre "where
marriages
are
arranged! Every
night
five or six boxes are taken for that
purpose.
You will
frighten
our
audience"
(p.
351).
Mina Curtiss seems
entirely justified
in
suggesting
another motive for the
management's
hesitation: the
bourgeois
audi-
ence would have been too shocked at the
sight,
on
stage,
of
"lifelike,
working-class
characters ruled
by
their
passions" (p.
397).
The
public
and critics were
obviously
as
unprepared
for Bizet's kind of realism as
they
were for his musical innovations.
The most
frequently
criticized artistic
concession,
on the
part
of
Bizet,
is his creation of
Micaila.
She
springs
to
life, fully grown
like
Athena,
based on a
single
mention in Merimee. Purists
invariably
con-
clude that she
represents
a violation of the author's
original story.
Don
Jose's
reminiscence of a
Basque
maiden is
simply personified-a legit-
imate,
conventional
tool,
used
by
dramatists. Seen in this
light,
and as
a vocal foil for Carmen's contralto
voice,
Micaila
assumes
genuine
validity.
These
factors,
traditions and motivations were to
interact,
and initi-
ate the numerous
changes
or additions which the
composer
himself
made in the
manuscript given
him
by
his librettists. In this
essay,
we
shall consider
only
one of the most
important
revisions-Bizet's
lyrics
for the habanera.
The words of
poets
have
long inspired
musical
settings. By
the seven-
teenth
century,
once fixed vocal forms were
firmly adopted,
the
poet
no
longer
wrote with a view of future musical translation. His creation
was
independent,
born of a mood or an idea. The
composer,
when trans-
posing
a
poem
into
music,
was denied that
poet's independence;
his
creation was limited
by
textual boundaries. His aim-to extend the
mood of the
poem-could, however,
not
infringe upon
the intrinsic
meaning
of the
poet.
Complex problems
confront us when we seek to define
"meaning."
Does a
poem
have
only
one
meaning?
And if
so,
whose? The
poet's,
the
reader's or both? Ezra Pound once said that
"great
literature is
simply
language charged
with
meaning
to the utmost
possible degree."
This
kind of concentration
presents
an almost infinite
variety
of
possible
in-
terpretations
to the
composer.
Edward T. Cone maintains that when the
latter sets a
poem
to
music,
he
actually
chooses "one
among
all its
forms,"
that "he delimits one sub-set within the
complete
set of all
pos-
sible forms." This
unique concept,
Cone
suggests, "might
be termed a
896 FRENCH REVIEW
latent form of the
poem;
and
..
. the
composer's
task is to make the la-
tent form
patent by presenting
it
through
the more
specific, inflexible,
and immediate medium of
music."''
In
summary,
he asserts:
"Ultimately
there can be
only
one
justification
for the serious
composition
of a
song;
it must be an
attempt
to increase our
understanding
of the
poem" (p.
15).
These
criteria, by extension, may
be
applied
to a discussion of
Bizet's
interpretation
of Merimee's short
story.
Consider how Don Jose introduces Carmen in the
prose
version: he is
seated, busily adding
a
copper
wire extension to his
military
chain
when, suddenly,
he hears some
bystanders
exclaim:
"Voila
la
gitan-
illa!" "Je levai les
yeux,
et
je
la vis... cette
Carmen,"
dressed in a
very
short red
skirt,
threadbare white silk
stockings
and adorable red
morocco leather
slippers
attached with flame-colored ribbons:
Elle ecartait sa mantille
afin
de montrer ses
epaules
et
un
gros bouquet
de cas-
sie
qui
sortait de sa chemise.
Elle
avait encore
une fleur
de cassie dans le coin de
la bouche,
et
s'avancait
en se
balancant
sur
ses hanches comme
une
pouliche
du
haras de
Cordoue... Chacun
lui adressait
quelque compliment gaillard sur
sa
tournure;
elle
repondait
&
chacun, faisant
les
yeux
en
coulisse,
le
poing sur
la
hanche, effrontee...
D'abord elle ne me
plut pas,
et
je repris
mon
ouvrage;
mais
elle, suivant
l'usage
des
femmes
et des chats
qui
ne viennent
pas quand
on
les
appelle
et
qui
viennent
quand
on ne les
appelle pas,
s'arr~ta
devant
moi et
m'adressa
la
parole.4
Compare
this
passage
with the
operatic presentation
of
Carmen,
as
transposed
into the habanera
verse,
first
by Halevy
and later
by Bizet;
here is the first stanza:
Halevy
Bizet
Illusion (?)
et
fantaisie,
Ainsi commencent les amours.
Et
voili
pour
la
vie,
Ou pour
six
mois ou pour huit
jours
Un matin sur sa route
On trouve
l'amour--I
est la.
II
vient sans
qu'on
s'en
doute
Et
sans
qu'on
s'en
doute
il
s'en va
II
vous prend, vous enleve,
II
fait
de
vous tout
ce
qu'il
veut.
C'est un delire, un rave
Et
ca
dure
ce
que
Ca
peut.
L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne
peut apprivoiser
Et
c'est bien en vain
qu'on l'appelle
S'il lui
convient de
refuser.
Rien
n'y fait,
menace
ou priere;
L'une
parle bien,
l'autre
se tait:
Et
c'est
l'autre
que je prefere,
11 n'a rien
dit,
mais il me
plait.
3
"Words Into Music: The
Composer's Approach," Sound
and Poetry:
English
Insti-
tute Essays, 1956,
ed.
Northrop Frye (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1957), p.
9.
4Prosper Merimee, Carmen,
ed. Maxime Revon (Paris:
Librairie Gamier
Freres,
1926), pp. 32,
33.
BIZET
897
Apart
from
Halevy's
awkward
repetition
of "sans... s'en
doute,"
other considerations confirm the
superiority
of Bizet's version.
Halevy's
expressions,
suitable for
drawing
room
exposition,
could never have
been uttered
by
Merimee's
heroine; they
rob Carmen of her feline
grace,
her inherent
spontaneity
and volatile
temperament.
This
gypsy
would not
report
on
love;
she
is, instead,
its
willing agent through
whom love
speaks
for
itself;
its mischievous
quality,
its
whimsy,
inborn
in
primitive Carmen,
elude
portrayal
in
Halevy's sophisticated
esthet-
ics;
notice also that he
ignores
Merimee's
equating
Carmen's move-
ments with a
filly's
and women in
general
with cats.
Bizet, by contrast,
is attentive to these nuances. His verse
incorporates
the
imagery
evoked
by
the
author, describing
an
impetuous
heroine who
emerges
a
proud
and
graceful
bird. This is indeed an
apt image
of
Carmen,
who
beyond
all else
proclaims
that she was born free and will die free! With his
equation
of women with
cats,
Merimee delineated his heroine as a defi-
ant
gypsy girl,
brazen and scornful of code or command. Bizet's
verse,
in tune with Merimee's
prose style,
reinforces this
portrait by
afford-
ing
the viewer a
psychological perspective
of Carmen:
A. Stanza
I, Refrain,
lines
1, 2, captures
the heroine's
self-image:
she is love
itself,
with traits of the untamable
bird,
or of her own brazen self:
L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que
nul ne
peut apprivoiser
L'amour
est
enfant
de
BohemeRefrain
Il
n'a
jamais
connu
de
loi;
Refrain
B. Stanza
I,
lines
3, 4, 5, project
her disdain for avowed admirers whose threats
or entreaties are to no avail:
Et c'est bien en
vain
qu'on l'appelle
S'il lui
convient de
refuser;
Rien
n'y fait,
menace ou
priere;
C. Stanza
I,
lines
6, 7, 8,
reveal
why
she chooses Don Jose:
L'un
parle bien,
l'autre
se
tait;
Et
c'est l'autre que je pref re,
II n'a rien dit,
mais
il
me
plaft.
Anonymity
is inferred
by
the term
"l'autre," suggesting
the chance factor in
love,
whereas its
repetition,
because of the word's somber
vowel,
hints at love's
fatal
design.
D. Stanza
III,
lines
1, 2, 7, 8,
announce how Carmen
responds
to a love
object:
possessiveness
smothers
passion,
freedom rekindles its
intensity:
L'oiseau que tu croyais surprendre
Battit de l'aile et s'envola
898
FRENCH REVIEW
Tu crois le
tenir,
il
t' vite;
Tu veux l'eviter,
il
te tient.
E.
Refrain,
lines
3, 4,
form a
threatening
thesis and antithesis:
Si tu
ne m
'aimes pas, je
t'aime;
Sije t'aime, prends garde
a toi!
It was
explained
earlier in this
inquiry why
Carmen's
protagonists,
inevitably, appear
redundant or verbose
by comparison
with their
prose counterparts.
The
single
enunciation of a
word,
when
sung,
would
not have an
impact
unless it were
expanded.
Aware of this trait in his
idiom,
Bizet
assigned
verbal
repeats
and additions a
specific
function:
the
recapitulation
and reinforcement of the sense of his verse. Here are
three
examples
of his
craftsmanship,
drawn from the refrain of the
Habanera; repeated
and added words are underlined:
1.
"Il n'a
jamais
jamais
connu de loi."
Insistence
upon "jamais"
underscores the
gypsy's
historical resistance to social
bondage;
he remains the
perpetual
nomad.
2. "Si tu ne m'aimes
pas
Si
tu
ne
m'aimes
pas"
The
repetition, interpreted rallentando,
induces a
lingering
on this basic
para-
dox: Carmen's
passion
is nourished
by indifference;
to resist her is to
challenge
her seductive
powers.
3. "Mais si
je t'aime,
Si
je t'aime, prends garde
a toi! "
This is a moment of
self-appraisal
for the heroine whose candid admission
fol-
lows: her love is destructive and fatal.
By extracting
a latent form of the
prose
tale and
translating
it into
patent form,
Bizet was able to
give
substance and
vitality
to the "one
sub-set" which he had chosen from the
complete
set of all
possible
in-
terpretations
of the Carmen text. This
"patent"
form
suggests
that Car-
men's love behaves as does fate:
ruthlessly, irrevocably.
The musical
setting
of the habanera verse
becomes,
in the words of Edward
Cone,
that "more
specific,
inflexible and immediate medium"
through
which
we
grasp
a
unique
sense of Merimee's creation.
This, then,
was the
special meaning
which Bizet
sought
to
project. By isolating
Merimee's
implication,
the
composer helped
to
deepen
our
understanding
of the
prose
which he had versified and translated into music.
How did Bizet add the dimension of sound to the sense of his verse?
In his Le Vers
francais,"
Maurice Grammont devotes a
large
section to
an
inquiry
entitled: "Les Sons
consideries
comme
moyen d'expression."
'
Paris: Librairie
Delagrave, 1954, pp. 195,
196.
BIZET 899
Here he asks:
"Quel
est le son d'une idee abstraite ou d'un sentiment?
Par
quelles voyelles
ou
par quelles
consonnes le
poete peut-il
les
pein-
dre"?
He states that our
greatest poets
have almost
always
tried to es-
tablish a certain
correspondence
between the sounds of the words
they
were
using
and the ideas
they
wanted to
express.
Grammont affirms that
our mind is
continually making
associations and
comparisons,
so that
purely
intellectual ideas become related to our sense
impressions:
Il en resulte
que
les
idles
les
plus
abstraites sont
presque toujours
associees
a des idees de
couleur,
de
son, d'odeur,
de
secheresse,
de
durete,
de mollesse
...
Le
langage
ordinaire nous
fournit
les
premiers
elements
d'une traduction
en
impressions
audibles. . . I est evident
qu'une
idee
grave pourra
?tre tra-
duite
par
des sons
graves...
Pour
produire l'impression qu'il cherche,
le
poete
pourra
accumuler dans ses vers des mots contenant tant6t des sons
graves,
tan-
t6t des sons doux ou d'autres encore
(pp. 195, 196).
It is this
rationale,
used as well in Grammont's "Effets obtenus
par
les
sons,'""
which
helps
us
appreciate
the link between sound and mean-
ing
in Bizet's habanera verse. In the
following analysis
of Stanza I and
of the
Refrain,
vowels under discussion are
underlined,
consonants are
capitalized;
numbers refer to the verse line:
1. Recall: Carmen sees herself a
proud bird,
disdainful of him who would
trap
her;
three
voyelles
clatantes evoke the sound of
flapping wings
as the bird
rises in
flight: "amour; un; oiseau";
2. Recall: Carmen is brazen and scornful of all
rules;
two
voyelles aigues
imi-
tate a
possible cry
of
joy
and admiration at the bird's
escape: "nul; apprivoiser";
7. Recall: Carmen is
love, taunting
and
playful;
four
voyelles
claires record her
capricious
idea of this sentiment:
"et; c'est; prefere".
A succession of consonnes
plosives, momentanees, occlusives,
simulate what
might
be successive emotions in the heroine.
5. Recall: Carmen is
contemptuous
of
admirers;
six
voiceless, "P,P,T,T,T,K,"
and one voiced
consonant, "B," register
her scorn:
"Priere; Parle bien; I'auTre;
se
Tait;
l'auTre;
Que";
6,7.
Recall: Carmen both dares and warns her
prey;
five voiceless
"P,P,P,T,T"
and one voiced "D"
project
these taunts:
"Prefere; Dit; Plait; Tu; Pas; je T'aime";
8. Recall: Carmen's love is
fatal;
two voiceless
"P,T"
and two voiced
"G,D"
punctuate
this: "Prends GarDe Toi."
If the
composer's
verse skill lacked the
verve,
the
virility
of
major
French
poets,
his
knowledge,
albeit unconscious or
intuitive,
and his
respect
for the French
poetic
tradition
guided
Bizet to choose those
sounds which most
effectively
relate to verbal sense. The two elements
harmonize and fuse into music which seems indivisible from content.
6 Petit
Traite
de
versification francaise
(Paris: Librairie Armand
Colin, 1958), pp.
124-141.
900 FRENCH REVIEW
After
analysis
of its
components,
this content evokes Merim'e
directly
-the Merim'e whose latent intention in Carmen has been translated
into Bizet's
opera,
its defined and immediate
patent
form.
This
essay
will have achieved its
purpose
if the vital
literary
and
esthetic contributions which Bizet made to Merimee's Carmen were to
attain
public acknowledgement,
even at this late date.
Perhaps
the not-
too-distant
centenary
of the
opera's
first
performance
(March 3, 1875)
offers an
appropriate
occasion to amend the credits of the libretto. Its
title
page might henceforth,
in
justice,
read:
"Adapted
from the short
story
of
Prosper
Merimee
by Georges
Bizet with the
collaboration of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic
Halkvy."
FAIRLEIGH DICKINSON UNIVERSITY