Elīna Garanča can channel Carmen. Her performance filmed live on January 16, 2010 made the rounds in the "Met Live in HD Summer Encore Series" and has been broadcast on the Great Performances Series on PBS.
Garanča sang with sexual magnetism and developed a very believable chemistry with Roberto Alagna. In the Seguidilla from the end of Act One, Garanča displayed her charms:
The tonality is as elusive and playful as the physical suggestion of Garanča. The key is B minor, but it is articulated strongly in the dominant until the thought of the inn "Lillias Pastia" swings us into D major [0:12]. A flamenco progression takes us for the first time to B minor with a tonal motion that trips like Alagna [0:24]. The smile of Garanča at this moment is the smile of Bizet himself.
The second verse explores D major by draping chromatic lines across a strong pedal bass. The music begins to dissolve. Garanča blows a breath across the register on Alagna's desk [1:12]. The music is blown into a cadenza-like passage that leans and relaxes.
The first stanza is echoed [1:31] but then the pattern is suspended. "I'm not talking to you," said Carmen, "I'm singing to myself. And I am thinking--it's not a crime to think."
But she is not just singing. She is not just thinking.
She sings unexpectedly in B-flat minor [2:45] in a tonality dark and vibrant, spontaneous and erotic. Don José asks if she will love him in this same key--one-half step low.
The suspended pattern continues as the second stanza is echoed [3:49] in B major. The resolution that arcs across the span from when this music was heard in D major is tonal arousal in purest form.
Garanča sings an unwritten cadenza at [4:05] to articulate the culmination released in one final motion of Seguidilla. Alagna swallows the final high B in a kiss.
Showing posts with label Bizet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bizet. Show all posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Hearing Bizet with Nietzsche
"Yesterday--would you believe it?" wrote Nietzsche, "I heard Bizet's masterwork for the 20th time." So opens his book known as "The Case of Wagner; A Musician's Problem."
"Again, I attended with a gentle devotion; I did not run away, again. This victory over my impatience surprises me. How fulfilling is such a work! One turns into a masterpiece with it.--And, indeed, I appeared to myself, every time that I heard Carmen, to be more of a philosopher, a better philosopher than I usually appear to myself: having become so patient, so happy, so East-Indian, so sedentary... To sit for five hours: the first step to sanctity!--May I say that Bizet's orchestral sound is the only one I can still endure?"
The music of Wagner and Bizet's Carmen were both experiencing rapid upward trajectories in popularity in 1888 when Nietzsche's book was first published. But they were not equal choices for Nietzsche. He knew Wagner quite well as a young man, so this shift in his alliances is significant.
Some writers have observed the relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche as having elements of a father/son dynamic because Nietzsche's father died when he was young and would have been more-or-less Wagner's age had he lived, and Wagner had children late in life but could have had children who were Nietzsche's age. The falling out between the two had all the complexities of family.
The vast majority of Nietzsche's text is directed against the works of Wagner. Wagner sought perfection in the total synthesis of all art forms. It is therefore a powerful thrust when Nietzsche describes perfection in Carmen:
"This music appears perfect to me. It approaches lightly, flexibly, courteously. It is pleasant, it does not perspire. 'That which is good is light, everything divine walks on tender feet': the first premise of my aesthetic. This music is vicious, refined, fatalistic: with it, it stays popular--it has the refinement of a race, not that of an individual. It is rich. It is precise. It builds, it organizes, accomplishes its goal."
I believe that one can also frame Nietzsche's perspective toward Carmen as a quasi-familial reaction:
"To repeat it: I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me, also a better musician, a better listener. Can one even still listen better?--I even bury my ears beneath this music, I hear its origin. It appears to me that I am experiencing its creation--[...] Bizet makes me fertile. Everything good makes me fertile. I have no other gratitude,--I also have no other proof for that which is good."
It is as though Nietzsche was rescued by Carmen. He leaves his Wagnerian family to elope with an opera.
"Here, another sensuality speaks, another sensitivity, another serenity," wrote Nietzsche, "Finally love, love that is translated back into nature! [...] Can you already see how much this music improves me?"
"Again, I attended with a gentle devotion; I did not run away, again. This victory over my impatience surprises me. How fulfilling is such a work! One turns into a masterpiece with it.--And, indeed, I appeared to myself, every time that I heard Carmen, to be more of a philosopher, a better philosopher than I usually appear to myself: having become so patient, so happy, so East-Indian, so sedentary... To sit for five hours: the first step to sanctity!--May I say that Bizet's orchestral sound is the only one I can still endure?"
The music of Wagner and Bizet's Carmen were both experiencing rapid upward trajectories in popularity in 1888 when Nietzsche's book was first published. But they were not equal choices for Nietzsche. He knew Wagner quite well as a young man, so this shift in his alliances is significant.
Some writers have observed the relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche as having elements of a father/son dynamic because Nietzsche's father died when he was young and would have been more-or-less Wagner's age had he lived, and Wagner had children late in life but could have had children who were Nietzsche's age. The falling out between the two had all the complexities of family.
The vast majority of Nietzsche's text is directed against the works of Wagner. Wagner sought perfection in the total synthesis of all art forms. It is therefore a powerful thrust when Nietzsche describes perfection in Carmen:
"This music appears perfect to me. It approaches lightly, flexibly, courteously. It is pleasant, it does not perspire. 'That which is good is light, everything divine walks on tender feet': the first premise of my aesthetic. This music is vicious, refined, fatalistic: with it, it stays popular--it has the refinement of a race, not that of an individual. It is rich. It is precise. It builds, it organizes, accomplishes its goal."
I believe that one can also frame Nietzsche's perspective toward Carmen as a quasi-familial reaction:
"To repeat it: I become a better man when Bizet speaks to me, also a better musician, a better listener. Can one even still listen better?--I even bury my ears beneath this music, I hear its origin. It appears to me that I am experiencing its creation--[...] Bizet makes me fertile. Everything good makes me fertile. I have no other gratitude,--I also have no other proof for that which is good."
It is as though Nietzsche was rescued by Carmen. He leaves his Wagnerian family to elope with an opera.
"Here, another sensuality speaks, another sensitivity, another serenity," wrote Nietzsche, "Finally love, love that is translated back into nature! [...] Can you already see how much this music improves me?"
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