Page 17 - Phil opening night program digital final

Program Notes

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Fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen Pablo Sarasate
(1844-1908)
For two years, Georges Bizet (1838-1875) and Pablo Sarasate were the shining stars of the Paris
Conservatory. They remained lifelong friends, and the young pre-teen Sarasate probably taught Bizet many
of the tunes later quoted in Bizet’s Spanish-inspired opera Carmen.
Bizet was an excellent pianist and vocal coach who eventually won the Prix de Rome. Sarasate, a virtuoso
violinist, arrived from Pamplona at age eleven in 1855. A brilliant soloist, Sarasate toured widely in Europe
and the Americas, composing fantasies for violin on operatic melodies by Mozart, Verdi, and Bizet and
flashy versions of Spanish dances, such as the Jota aragonesa.
Once the Spanish bolero’s steps had been codified, ‘authentic’ bolero was introduced to Paris by the Spanish
singer/guitarist Manuel Garcia, who embodied a romanticized view of the Roma, in negotiation with
concert culture. Chopin heard boleros performed by Garcia in 1831, inspiring his 1833 Introduction and
Bolero, op. 19 (Souvenir d’Andalousie). Garcia’s daughter Pauline Viardot collected boleros, and her salon
encouraged hybrids (1828-1880) from Russian composers, Liszt, and Saint-Saëns.
Spanish and Caribbean songs were also crucial sources of melody and rhythm for the Romantics. Carmen’s
famous “Habañera” aria is a cover: it re-texts the popular song “El Arreglito” by Basque composer Sebastian
Iradier, who had traveled to Havana. Viardot’s salons and Sarasate’s influence inspired Bizet to incorporate
Spanish melodies into a dozen works. Lalo composed his Symphonie espagnole violin concerto for Sarasate,
and Sarasate was most happy when performing his Fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen: he is, after all, Bizet’s most
likely source.

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Overture to William Tell Gioachino Rossini
(1792-1868)

Gioachino Rossini was the best Italian composer of the generation following Mozart. A contemporary of
Beethoven and Berlioz, he wrote dozens of works in French, Italian, and Latin (each adapted to local tastes),
especially after falling for (and marrying) the composer and dramatic soprano Isabella Colbran, daughter of
Spain’s court composer. Colbran and Rossini created eighteen operas together before separating in 1830.
Following successes in his twenties like The Barber of Seville (1816) and Cinderella (1817), Rossini
announced that he would retire early: in 1828 a Paris newspaper confidently predicted, “Rossini has
promised to write a work, Guillaume Tell, but he has asserted that he will not go beyond this promise
and that this opera will be the last to come from his pen.” How famous was he? The author Stendhal had
written Rossini’s Memoirs four years earlier: “There is no man who has been more frequently the subject
of conversation, from Moscow to Naples, from London to Vienna, from Paris to Calcutta, than the subject
of these memoirs. His glory already knows no other bounds than those of civilization itself, and yet he is

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