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Appendix
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Appendix the fIrst Cast of CarMeN The first production was reviewed by Arthur Pougin. La Chronique Musicale (15 March 1857), 275–81; Charles de Senneville, “Les Premières,”La Comédie (14 March 1875). The opera’s cast of characters is as follows: Morales, an officer (bass); Mica ëla, a peasant girl (soprano); Zuniga, a lieutenant of dragoons (bass); Don José, a corporal of the dragoons (tenor); Carmen, a Gypsy girl (soprano); Mercedes and Frasquita, Gypsy friends of Carmen (mezzo-sopranos); Escamillo, a toreador (baritone); El Remendad and El Dancaïro, Gypsy smugglers (tenor and baritone); cigarette girls, dragoons, Lillas Pastia, smugglers and dancers. The original production , according to records at the Bibliothèque Nationale de l’Opéra, called for 40 male choral members; 38 female choral members; 30 dancers (15 men and 15 women); 20 townspeople and 24 children in Act I; in Act II, 40 male and 38 female choral members; 16 male and female Gypsy dancers; one old woman and one young girl; Act III: 78 male and female smugglers; and 3 guards; Act IV, 40 male and 38 female choral members; 24 townspeople, 6 elegant ladies, 8 background people; female and male dancers consisting of upper-class women, vendors, bullfighters, picadors, and extras; 12 upper-class ladies, 8 soldiers, and one major. A great deal, as has been noted, has been written about the performance and compositional histories of Carmen. The Opéra-Comique version as written by Bizet had only thirty-four performances. The grand opera score is the version performed to this day. Bizet’s staging manual is a work that illustrates clearly Bizet’s Delsartian search for the perfect synthesis among music, movement, and gesture, as well as a sensitivity to the characters required by the composer of all his principal singers. The difference between the first and second versions of the score has to do with the removal in the grand opera score of the spoken dialogue and the replacement of these parts with sung dialogue. It is important to note that, [206] Appendix to this day, the Opéra-Comique theater continues to perform Bizet’s version of Carmen, with its long passages of spoken versus sung dialogue. Guiraud removed the spoken passages in order to tighten a score that did not go over well with the French public. This version exists to the present day. Guiraud, while trying to help save his friend’s score, was considered to have cut too much. The wonderfully ethnographic detail of Bizet’s score, some argue, has been lost in his editing. These musical passages provided “background, explained motivations, or developed character” (Carmen, 1875–1969 [Dossier d’oeuvre], BN-Opéra, 75). ...