Page 231 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Millet (1814–1875) and the young Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) captured on canvas the life of the downtrodden (Figure 13.10). Writer Charles Dickens (1812–1870) did the same in his realistic novels such as Ol- iver Twist (1838) and Bleak House (1852). The aim of these artists was to transform the mundane and the commonplace into art, to find the poetic and heroic in even the most ordinary aspects of human expe- rience.
Must art imitate life? Composers of
realistic opera thought so and thus em-
braced even the gritty and unsavory as-
pects of nineteenth-century existence.
The plots of their operas could read like
tabloid headlines: “Knife-Wielding Gypsy Girl Arrested in Cigarette Factory” (Bizet’s Carmen, 1875); “Jealous Clown Stabs Wife to Death” (Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, 1892); “Abused Singer Murders Chief of Police” (Puccini’s Tosca, 1892). If traditional Romantic opera is usually sentimental, nineteenth-centu- ry realistic opera is sensational.
Georges Bizet’s Carmen (1875)
The first important realistic opera is Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet (bee-SAY). Bizet (1838–1875), who spent his short life entirely in Paris, was primarily an op- era composer, and Carmen is his masterpiece. Set in nineteenth-century Spain, Carmen centers on a sensual young gypsy woman known only as Carmen (Figure 13.11). This sexually assertive, willful woman holds the populace
in her sway. By means of her alluring dance and song, she seduces a na- ïve army corporal, Don José. Falling hopelessly in love, Don José deserts his military post, “marries” Carmen, and takes up with her gypsy bandit friends. But Carmen, who refuses to belong to any man, soon abandons Don José to give herself to the handsome bullfighter Escamillo. Having lost all for nothing, the humiliated Don José stabs Carmen to death in a bloody ending.
This violent conclusion highlights the stark realism of Carmen. The heroine is a woman of easy virtue available to every man, albeit on her own terms. She lives for the moment, surrounded by social outcasts (gyp- sies), prostitutes, and thieves. All this was shocking stuff for the Parisian audiences of Bizet’s day. During the first rehearsals in 1875, the women
of the chorus threatened to strike because they were asked to smoke and fight on stage. Critics called the libretto “obscene.” Bizet’s producers asked him to tone down the more lurid aspects of the drama (especially the bloody ending)—to make it more acceptable as family entertainment—but he refused.
Carmen is full of alluring melodies including the well-known Tore- ador Song and the even more beloved Habanera. In fashioning these tunes,
Figure 13.10
Vincent van Gogh, The Potato Eaters (1885). During his youth, van Gogh chose to live and work in the coal-mining region of eastern Belgium. This grim paint- ing records his impressions of life within a mining family and the evening meal of potatoes and tea. Van Gogh’s point was that great art could be made from even the most mundane object or everyday scene.
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Figure 13.11
Beyoncé poses with the ap- propriately seductive red dress that she wore in Carmen: A Hip Hopera.
56797_ch13_ptg01.indd 209 29/08/14 3:36 PM
Frank Micelotta/Getty Images Art Resource, NY
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