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O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
February 11 - March 25, 2017
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cites Borrow in his fourth chapter of
Carmen
with the exclusive
purpose of refuting one of his claims concerning the inherent
chastity of the gypsy women. Nevertheless, Borrow’s writings
confirmed and reawakened Mérimée’s own memories.
The fact that Mérimée’s novella is the result of so much
similar academic study comes as no surprise. Mérimée was
a scholar and an administrator at heart who made his name
in France not only as an author, but also as his country’s
inspector-general of historical monuments. It was through this
work that he applied his expertise in architecture, the arts, and
history towards protecting the architectural patrimony of France.
Mérimée always had a certain discomfort with fictional writing,
and that prompted him to often include extraneous, distracting
third-person narrators and
noms de plume
in his attempts to
curtail criticism by his peers, maintain anonymity, and denigrate
fictional writing, a genre that, in his view, was built on banalities
and falsities. This unevenness of intent produced his
Carmen
– was it conceived as a freestanding work of fiction, or a long-
ruminated-upon academic treatise about the gypsies? The answer
is both.
The story Mérimée follows is more or less maintained
in Bizet’s opera, but the radical differences come in narrative
structure. The first half of the novella is told by Mérimée himself,
reflecting on his fictitious encounter with a man whom he later
learns is “José Navarro, the most notorious bandit in Andalusia.”
Mérimée and Don José then encounter Carmen in Seville, though
she and Don José appear to have had a past. Flash forward to the
days preceding Don José’s execution for an as-yet-unrevealed
crime, when the narrative voice switches from Mérimée himself
to José, who recounts the story of his involvement with Carmen.
Here, Carmen is realized in her fullest detail, justly becomes the
novella’s best-defined character, and emerges as an archetype
for the Gypsies. Much like the Carmen of Bizet’s opera, she’s
uniquely beautiful, resourceful, feisty, resolute, and intelligent,
despite having no formal education.
From the third chapter on, the opera and the novella
follow similar plots. Carmen is still an independent
bohémienne
who cannot be tamed; Mérimée even ascribes animal-like
characteristics to her, comparing her swaying hips to “some filly
out of the Córdoba stud.” She still manages to land herself in
prison after an altercation in the cigarette factory, but seduces
Don José into letting her escape. When José is taken to jail
himself, Carmen helps him break out and he joins her and her
band of smugglers. José then marries Carmen, but before long
she tires of him. All the while, Carmen has continued to attract
the attention of various wealthy sponsors, including the picador
Lucas, the character who plays a small part in Mérimée’s story and
is developed into the toreador Escamillo in Bizet’s opera. After she
leaves José for Lucas, the story reaches its violent culmination in
a confrontation in which the jilted, unhinged José stabs Carmen,
buries her, and surrenders to the police – the crime for which he
is being executed at the end of Chapter Two.
Almost taking precedence over the events and characters,
gypsy culture is interspersed throughout the novella. Peppered
with gypsy sayings, folk songs, and cultural asides,
Carmen
seems
a paean to an exotic culture contrasting with contemporary
France. In fact, the novella’s oft-maligned final chapter is entirely
a description of gypsy ways, attitudes, and language culled from
Mérimée’s research. But here Mérimée’s story loses gravitas; this
later-date addition of the fourth chapter is a complete departure
from the plot line or characters – not once in the chapter is
Carmen herself even mentioned! A compelling resolution to
the novella is lost to Mérimée’s preoccupation with history.
Fortunately, though, this left Bizet and his team with a strong
skeleton upon which to build their opera.
“Mérimée’s ‘Carmen’? Is she not killed by her lover? And
that background of thieves, gypsies, cigar-makers? At the Opéra
Comique, a family theatre!...You will frighten off our audience.
It is impossible,” exclaimed Camille du Locle, director of
the Opéra Comique, when
Carmen
librettist Ludovic Halévy
brought forward the joint project he was preparing with his
co-librettist, Henri Meilhac, and Bizet. Programming
Carmen
represented a significant shift for the Opéra Comique. For
one thing, a murder had never been seen on its stage. The
Opéra Comique thrived presenting wholly French works to a
Carmen in trouble with the law after wounding another girl
at the cigarette factory: an illustration by Eugène Decisy
from an early edition of Prosper Mérimée’s novella.
A 1970 stamp
commemorated the
100th anniversary
of Prosper Mérimée’s
death.