18ÈME FESTIVAL D’ART LYRIQUE PÉZENAS ENCHANTÉE – CONCERT A TRE VOCI
PEZENAS
Programme
Saturday, October 7, 2023 at 8:30 p.m. / Foyer des campagnes
CARMEN’S PASSION :
A comic opera in 4 acts, CARMEN is the last opera by Georges BIZET (1838-1875), based on a libretto by Henry MEILHAC and Ludovic HALEVY after a short story by Prosper MÉRIMÉE.
Over and above the distorted image that the librettists gave it for the convenience and taste of the time, so as not to shock bourgeois virtues, BIZET?s score is a masterpiece that, through the genius of its composer and the truth and humanity of its music, intuitively connects with the dark, savage tragedy of MÉRIMÉE?s short story.
CARMEN is first and foremost a story of passion, seduction, carnal desire, love and freedom, but also of violence, outlaws, betrayals and a crime of passion? in the popular Seville of 1820s Spain, struggling to recover from the violence of the Napoleonic Wars.
To recapture the rugged, dramatic intensity of Mérimé?s short story, we dare to purify the musical work of its “espagnolades”, the clichés of folkloric glitz that have so often transformed opera into carnival or Spanish operetta.
We dare to give CARMEN back its full dimension as a realistic opera, probably the first of its kind, an intense tragedy of passion where feelings are of a violent naturalism: blood, sex and death, for the disturbing characters of a sultry, free-spirited woman who charms all the men and enrages the women, and a deserter brigadier, madly in love with and jealously murdering the seductive gypsy woman.
All the festive aspects we’ll be keeping are there to hide the true nature of things and situations. A ritual dance of seduction, frenetic, sometimes hysterical, an affirmation of the despair of living and the fatality of loving. A cynical, casual dance of death, heralding a final kill.
Passion of Love, Passion of Death, CARMEN is the expression of liberation at the price of consented immolation, the ultimate sacrifice and price of all freedom.
GALA followed by cocktails – Special price 35? reduced 30? members, students, jobseekers
