{"id":47167,"date":"2024-09-11T17:17:28","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T15:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b9cafc6c-2412-44fd-9824-6b06a24c6b15"},"modified":"2024-09-11T18:07:16","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T16:07:16","slug":"love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Bizet\u2019s Carmen? Here are six operas you’ll want to try next"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 15:17 PM<\/p>

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Carmen<\/em> is the opera that virtually everybody knows a bit of, even if they don\u2019t actually know they know it. Great, often instantly recognisable tunes spill liberally out of Georges Bizet<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s masterpiece – such as the fiery Overture, and the Flower Song, which we named as one of the very best songs about flowers<\/a><\/strong> in the repertoire. <\/p>

Georges Bizet: five essential works<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
Then there’s Carmen\u2019s slinky \u2018Habanera<\/a><\/strong>\u2019, her dashing \u2018Gypsy Song\u2019, Escamillo\u2019s testosterone-fuelled \u2018Tor\u00e9ador\u2019 \u2013 resurfacing pell-mell in various manifestations of popular culture (not least the old Sunpat peanut butter ads), and inspiring a range of adaptations, such as Hammerstein\u2019s brilliant musical Carmen Jones<\/em>. <\/p>
<\/div><\/figure>In short Carmen<\/em> is well-known and much-loved. It has captivating <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-is-a-melody\">melodies<\/a><\/strong>, a wonderful storyline, and some of opera’s most colourful and memorable characters. Not for nothing did we name Carmen <\/em>one of the very <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/best-operas-for-beginners\">best operas for beginners<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘Vicious, painful, tragic’: Friedrich Nietzsche was an early fan<\/h2>Carmen<\/em> is, however, much more than just a string of pretty melodies. The heroine\u2019s confrontational sexual independence was thought scandalous, indeed revolutionary in its period (1875), and can still provoke and shock contemporary audiences. <\/p>Her gory demise (knifed in the heart by Don Jos\u00e9, a jilted lover) prompted Friedrich Nietzsche to dub the opera \u2018vicious, painful, tragic, fatalistic\u2019. Nietzsche, with typical acuity, also praised the music\u2019s Gallic refinement, admiring how it addressed the listener \u2018lightly, flexibly, courteously\u2019, and judging the work as a whole \u2018perfect\u2019. Audiences worldwide continue to agree with Nietzsche\u2019s verdict.<\/p>By the way, if you simply can’t get enough Carmen<\/em>, you can go and hear it at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/bbc-proms\/2024-bbc-proms-listings\">2024 BBC Proms<\/a><\/strong>! It’s being performed as a semi-staged performance, in French with English surtitles, for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/bbc-proms-today-29-august-2024-carmen\">Prom 52<\/a> <\/strong>(Thur 29 August). Soloists include Rihab Chaieb (Carmen), Evan LeRoy Johnson (Don Jos\u00e9), and \u0141ukasz Goli\u0144ski (Escamillo). They are joined by the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/anja-bihlmaier-bbc-philharmonic-principal-guest-conductor\">Anja Bihlmaier<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-what-to-listen-to-after-bizet-s-carmen\">What to listen to after Bizet’s Carmen<\/em><\/h2><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-puccini-madam-butterfly\">Puccini: Madam Butterfly<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>Carmen is stabbed to death by a jealous lover. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/giacomo-puccini\">Puccini<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Butterfly, by contrast, turns a sword upon herself when Pinkerton, her faithless American \u2018husband\u2019, returns to Nagasaki with the real Mrs Pinkerton to claim the son he fathered on a naval posting three years previously. Butterfly\u2019s heartbroken suicide elicited from Puccini a peroration of passionate intensity, every bit the equal of Bizet\u2019s dramatic d\u00e9nouement. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Puccini - Mme Batterfly - Un bel di, vedremo - Ying Huang - Cio-Cio-San (Mme Butterfly)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bkUq98oiyRc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/madam-butterfly-a-guide-to-puccinis-famous-opera-and-its-best-recordings\">Madam<\/em> Butterfly<\/em><\/a><\/strong> vies with Carmen<\/em> as the greatest of all crowd-pleasing popular operas, and in its sharp criticism of rapacious American imperialism, retains an all-too-obvious contemporary relevance.<\/p><ul><li>Puccini features in our list of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/the-greatest-opera-composers-of-all-time\">greatest opera composers ever<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>Essential recording: <\/strong>Renata Scotto, Rome Opera Orchestra\/ Sir John Barbirolli<br\/>EMI 567 8852<\/em><\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-donizetti-lucia-di-lammermoor\">Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>Like Butterfly, Lucia loves in vain, and dies for it. This time, it is family factionalism and feuding in Lowland Scotland that destroy her aspirations to marry Edgardo, her brother\u2019s sworn enemy. <\/p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/gaetano-donizetti\">Donizetti<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s tonal palette is leaner and darker than that of either Bizet or Puccini, but appropriate to Sir Walter Scott\u2019s murky tale of thwarted passion. The Act II sextet, for instance, is an astonishingly powerful articulation of the warring emotions of the central characters. <\/p>Lucia kills the husband forced on her, is unhinged mentally, and sings the harrowing \u2018Mad Scene\u2019, a locus classicus<\/em> of 19th-century prima donna suffering.<\/p>Essential recording: <\/strong>Maria Callas, Philharmonia\/Tullio Serafin<br\/>EMI 556 2842<\/em><\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-purcell-dido-and-aeneas\">Purcell: Dido and Aeneas<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>Dido dies not so much of thwarted love as of simple abandonment. When Aeneas, temporarily her lover, quits Carthage without her, her world implodes and, leaving it, she sings the deeply affecting lament \u2018When I am laid in earth\u2019. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Purcell -\u3008Dido and Aeneas\u3009"When I am laid in earth" \/ Emma Kirkby\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H3wAarmPYKU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure>\u2018Death is now a welcome guest,\u2019 she muses darkly, and she means it \u2013 she is as utterly devoid of hope as Don Jos\u00e9 in Carmen<\/em>. Earlier the score of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/guide-purcell-dido-and-aeneas-best-recordings\">Dido and Aeneas<\/a><\/strong><\/em> is peppered with variety, including an echo chorus, a thunderstorm, a comic scene with sailors, and jaunty dance episodes. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/henry-purcell\">Purcell<\/a><\/strong> packs it all into just an hour, making this a pocket masterpiece.<\/p>Essential recording: <\/strong>Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra\/Nicholas McGegan<br\/>Harmonia Mundi HMU 907110<\/em><\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-bellini-norma\">Bellini: Norma<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>Druidic priestess Norma is a dying diva with a difference, one of few in operatic history to voluntarily embrace her personal date with destiny. Emotionally ravaged in a classic love-triangle situation, she threatens to kill her two children by Pollione, the occupying Roman proconsul. She finally mounts a blazing sacrificial pyre with him, to the astonishment of all present. <\/p>The plot is gruesome, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/vincenzo-bellini\">Bellini<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s music is of alluring lyric purity, the epitome of the Italian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/what-bel-canto\">bel canto<\/strong><\/a><\/em> tradition. \u2018Casta Diva\u2019 is Norma\u2019s calling card, an aria of mesmerising beauty (it subsequently featured in an episode of The Simpsons<\/em>), and the closing duet with Pollione is throat-catchingly poignant. Small wonder that Norma was the great <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/maria-callas-soprano\">Maria Callas<\/a><\/strong>‘s favourite role. <\/p><ul><li>Maria Callas finished high up in our list of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/20-greatest-sopranos-all-time\">greatest sopranos of all time<\/a><\/strong> <\/li><\/ul>Essential recording: <\/strong>Maria Callas, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala di Milano\/Tullio Serafin<br\/>EMI 566 4282<\/em><\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-verdi-la-traviata\">Verdi: La Traviata<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>Disease strikes prima donnas frequently, providing a suitably lachrymose conclusion to many a tangled libretto. Of all the great operatic tear-jerkers, none is more reliably effective than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/giuseppe-verdi\">Verdi<\/a><\/strong>‘s La traviata<\/em> \u2013 the story of the tragic courtesan who ill-advisedly falls in love above her social station \u2013 is guaranteed to have a fair proportion of any audience grappling for its hankies. <\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/verdis-requiem-guide\">Verdi’s Requiem: a quick guide<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>Especially when wedded, as it is, to Verdi\u2019s achingly lyrical music, from the yearning poignancy of the already doom-laden orchestral prelude to the shattering moment when she reads a letter of reconciliation from her lover, belatedly received on her deathbed as she expires from consumption.<\/p>We named Verdi one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/best-italian-composers-of-all-time\">best Italian composers<\/a> of all time<\/strong><\/p>Essential recording: <\/strong>Ileana Cotrubas, Bavarian State Opera Orchestra\/Carlos Kleiber<br\/>DG 477 7115<\/em><\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-g-luck-orfeo-ed-euridice\">Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>Here\u2019s a rarity \u2013 an operatic heroine who is dead at the outset, comes back to life, expires a second time, then is miraculously resurrected at the work\u2019s conclusion. Not a real-life scenario, naturally, but one drawn from the realms of myth. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Philippe Jaroussky records Gluck: Che far\u00f2 senza Euridice (Orfeo ed Euridice)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z8dIevs0VlU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure>Orfeo sings the opera\u2019s most famous number (the ravishing \u2018Che far\u00f2 senza Euridice\u2019), melting the god Amor\u2019s heart and definitively restoring Euridice to the realms of the living. In seeking to purge opera of elements unnecessary to the dramatic action, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/christoph-willibald-gluck\">Gluck<\/a><\/strong> wrote (as conductor John Eliot Gardiner puts it) \u2018music of extraordinary purity, directness and concision\u2019.<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/guide-glucks-style\">A guide to Gluck’s style<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>Essential recording: <\/strong>Veronica Cangemi, Freiberg Baroque Orchestra\/Ren\u00e9 Jacobs<br\/>Harmonia Mundi HMC901742-43<\/em><\/p><p\/>For more details on Bizet and his development of Carmen,<\/em> read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/magazine\/current-issue\/bbc-music-magazine\">January issue<\/a> of BBC Music Magazine<\/em>, where he is our Composer of the Month.<\/p>This article appeared in the October 2007 issue of BBC Music Magazine.<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Published: Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 15:17 PM Carmen is the opera that virtually everybody knows a bit of, even if they don\u2019t actually know they know it. Great, often instantly recognisable tunes spill liberally out of Georges Bizet\u2019s masterpiece – such as the fiery Overture, and the Flower Song, which we named as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":47168,"template":"","categories":[1,17],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"5"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/09\/love-bizets-carmen-here-are-six-operas-youll-want-to-try-next.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Published: Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 15:17 PM Carmen is the opera that virtually everybody knows a bit of, even if they don\u2019t actually know they know it. Great, often instantly recognisable tunes spill liberally out of Georges Bizet\u2019s masterpiece – such as the fiery Overture, and the Flower Song, which we named as…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/47167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}