Georges Bizet

* "Les Pecheurs de Perles" - Opera in Three Acts

Alfredo Kraus (Nadir), Sesto Bruscantini (Zurga),
Adriana Maliponte (Leila), Antonio Campo (Nourabad)
Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro Liceo di Barcelona/Carlo Felice Cillario
Bongiovanni GB516/7-2 [2CDs] (ADD) TT: 46:12 + 59:19

Summary for the Busy Executive: French Realistic Naturalism as smashing
Music.  Intriguingly obvious; the best Performence of this opera currently
on Record.  Smart-Gorgeous!

The premiere of "Carmen" in 1875 was no success, and a few weeks thereafter
Bizet died of a heart alienation, which he summarized with the words: "I
have failed again".  When we know what a masterwork it actually was and how
much acclaim it got over the years, We can sum up with saying that Bizet
was a easy-going and chosefree person, but he could never take a failure
with balanced mood.  And actually he had more then "Carmen" to be proud of.

The arts devloped a bit different in France then in Germany.  At the mid
of the 19th century the fire and expansive power of the French Romanticism
subsided.  Literary taste tired of the uncritical flights of imagination,
of the eternal stories whose complicated atrificiality belied life.  Thus
naturalism came in direct opposition, a conscious reaction, to Romanticism.
The soil was well prepared by Comtes philosophical school and by such
publications as the french translation of Darwins "The Origin of Spieces"
(1862), Renans "Life of Jesus" (1863), and Claude Bernards many volumes
on experimental medicine.  Author like Balzac and Flaubert were true
realistic, and more so then many other artists, but still they remained
Romantics in their approach to art and estetic philosophy.  The actual
founders of Naturalism were Edmond Goncourt (1822-1896) and Jules Goncourt
(1830-1870) who, with their own words; "wrote true novels although the
public preferred false and artificial ones".  Their style is rich and
nervous, often somewhat bizarre as they constantly strove to be artistic.
they wanted to piant human beings and human aspiration in words with the
visual accuracy of a portrait.  A faithful disciple of them were Alphonse
Daudet (1840-1897), the poet of the novel, whose naturalism was still
tempted by a delicate sentimentalism and a fine sence of humour.  One Real
champion was of course the uncompromising Guy de Maupassant, but the finest
master of the French Naturalism was undoubtlely Emile Zola, whose novellas
became, under the influence of sociological studies, documents of human
life and customs, and recalled the finest traditions of the French
litterature.

It took longer for the Naturalism to make success on the stage.  One
reason is that it should always take longer time for a "style" to etablish
oneself in music, as opera, then the craft take a little longer to learn.
But one other reason was also the stubborn indulgence in local colour at
the theatres.  This feature of local colour was perceived as hardly tied
to Romanticism, as one of the charcteristic traits of romantic men was
their affinity to for the Oriental.  The litterature show so many examples
of artist trying to illustarte the Orient as something that both tempted
and scared them; Kundry, Salome the list is long - and even the music in
Tosca, whichs plot take place in Rome in the 19th century, sound of
pentatonic harmonies.  One might wonder what the Romanticist saw so
obsessing with the Orient, but a scholar, whose name I forgot, remarked
upon Leonardos da Vinci famous painting: "Mona Lisa knows why she is
smiling of course.  Just the other don't know it, and to them it appears
a mystery".  Emile Aguier on the other hand commented upon Theophile
Gauthiers oriental obsession that; "He needed a camel and four dirty
Bedouins to tickle his brains into creative action".  To tackle the problem
a bunch of poets - among them Roumanile, Aubanel and Mistral - founded "The
Felibrige Society" to work for to resusciatate the artistical definition of
Folklore and Orientalism.  The talented and sensetive Bizet, runned right
into the newopened climate, and conscious about it to whatever degree, his
naturalist and anti-sentimental operas came exactly right in the time of
the upspring of the realist definition of Orientalism, and hence the power
with which his music conquered the popularity of all years since.

With thinking music of the like of Bach/Haendel to be too much moulding
ancient garbage, the idioms of Rossini and alike to childish, and as seeing
it as a reacton upon the heavy Wagner/Bruckner art, Nietzsche, who once had
found his artistic ideal in Wagners sentimental melodramatic opera, wrote
enraptured that Bizet had released a welldoing and dry sirocco over Wagners
decadent world of sounds and ideas:

   "Yesterday I heard Bizets masterpiece for - you could guess it? -
   twentieth time, and I feel a new and different sensualism, a beautful
   African spirit [...] a suntenned sensibility from the south" [...]
   "This music is wicked, refined, fatastic, and withal remains popular"
   [...] "And finally love; the to the natural retranslated love [...]
   as fatality; cynical, innocent, cruel, and thereby natural! Love is
   like war in its methods..." [...] "Have more painful, more tragic
   accents ever been heard on stage before? And how are they obtained?
   Without grimaces of any kind!  No trace here of that sloppy
   sentimentality that is so typical for Wagner and his likes...." a.s.o.

Whatever Nietzsche philosophied, no doubt he was at least right to the
point that the time of sentimentality was a past one.  Bizet had actually
already manifested the style in "Les Pecheurs de Perles".  The opera "The
Pearl Fishers" has never actually won the acclaim it should have had.  That
"Carmen" was a great masterwork has after its upcoming overshadowed Bizets
earlier Oriental-Naturalist opera in a way that highly unfair to its actual
quailty and inspired beauty.  "Carmen" was masterful, bu of course not so
gigantic that it retrospectively can have worked has having deprived "The
Pearl Fishers" a success at its premiere in 1863 (that makes 12 years
earlier), but the explanation is that the effect of the work of the
"Felibristes" had not yet bloomed out in full.  Due to the old definition,
Bizet had to bear ridicule from Romantic critcs for aping Wagner, and from
those critics who were too little Romantic yet too much Nationalist to give
Wagner any credit - good or bad - accusations for aping Verdi.  None of
these critics are remembered even to the name today, but Bizets "Les
Pecheurs de Perles" still stands as a masterwork, confess it or not!

As not everybody might know the plot of "The Pearl Fishers", I am going to
provide a short and roughle synopsis:

Act I: Zurga has been appointed new chief of the pearl fishers on Ceylon,
when he meets his friend of his youth, Nadir.  Once upon a time they became
enemies and antagonists, as they both fell in love with the priestess Leila
in the Brahma-temple ("Au fond du temple saint"), but all this is now
forgotten and they swear each other eternal friendship.  The pearlfishing
of the season shall just begin, and therefore the enveiled priestess, who
every year pray to the Gods for the fishermens well-being, comes down.
Zurga calls her to pray night and day, and he promises her his love if
she keeps her promise of chaste.  If she breaks it, she will be punished
with a death sentence.  She is just about to reply when her eyes fall upon
Nadir.  The high-priest Nourabad stresses to her that she still can be
set free from her mission, but she insists to execute it, and enters the
temple.  Nadir is shaken that the enveiled priestess is Leila, whom he
still is in love with, what he expresses in the Aria "Je crois entendre
encore".  Act II: The same evening the lovers meet in the temple, and
Nadir tries to convince Leila that they shall escape togetehr.  She
refuses, but she admits that she still loves him ("Comme autrefois").
Nourabad has been standing hidden in the temple, and now he calls out the
people who shall accuse Leila for having broken her promise.  Zurga rips
the veil off from Leilas face, recognizes her, and in wrath over Nadirs
betrayal dooms her to death.  Act III: Leila begs Zurga to have mercy on
Nadir, but when he himself ensures his love, she sees the battle is lost,
and instead asks him to give her mother that necklace she always carried
around her neck.  Zurga now realizes that Leila once has saved his life,
and he decides to help her in exchange.  When Leila and Nadir shall enter
the offerplace where they shall be lit on fire, Zurga shouts to the people
that the light on the sky is not the dawn but their houses burning down,
and they hurries away to their village to save what can saved of their
houses.  Zurga sets Leila and Nadir free, and they manage to escape before
the enraged people are back to demand their revenge.  But further it
doesn't get, when Zurga is sentenced to death by the raging crowd and
he finds to have to be burned himself.

Although now "Carmen" has had vastly more performances throughout, "The
Pearl Fishers" was never by any means hold in low esteem at least by
musicians.  Ever since around 1880 the heldentenor of Nadir has been one
of the most sought roles by tenors.  And that is no surprise as especially
Nadirs singing in the first act can be so incredibly beutiful and dignified
convincing in dramatic expression, that it would be any ambitious great
tenors pride to do it well.  No Frenchman, or any Verist composer at all,
ever wrote anything so masterful for heldentenor.  The only one I can think
of had probably been able to challence Bizets music here is Wilhelm Lekeu
(who though perhaps owed somewhat more to Wagner), but he died very young,
before his prodigal talent - as manifested in "Andromedee" - broke out in
full bloom.  But the role of Nadir by no means give the tenor a chance to
triumph so easily, and Alfredo Kraus demonstrates his supremancy in this
role with singing the famous aria "Je crois entendre encore" in extremely
high tessitura, in fact it is in the original key of A-Minor, instead of
the usual transcription some step downwards.  But it is the clear loving
phrasing of Kraus what gives Nadir his exact connotation, not only as
regards langour and abandon, but also for his vibrant and bold elans.
Consequently also the less known allegro "Des Savannes et des Forestes",
the above mentioned duet with Zurga, the charming serenade "De mon Amie"
and the tender "Ton Coeur n'a pas compris le mien" sung together with
Leila, find in Kraus a singer and an interpreter of outmost importance.
Moreover, in addition to Kraus who, in his turn, is by far the best Zurga
in the recording history.  In fact, the nobility and the authority of Seste
Bruscantini and the pathos through which he outlines the inner conflicts
of his character (not only in the aria "O Nadir, tendre ami") perfectly
matches his varied and soft singing, as well as his confident execution of
phrases something so high as as to reach G-Sharp (Andantino: "Une femme
encounne", Act I).  Beside the correct performence of the bass Antonio
Campo who sings Nourabad, also the Leila of Adriana Maliponte presents all
the charateristics of an interpretation on high level: absolutely fluent
and precise agilities, soft and inspired vocality as in the Largo "O Dieu
Brahma", nostalcig and tender expresion in "Comme autre Fois" and in the
love duet with Nadir.  In this case too we might speak of the best Leila
ever recorded.

All in all, such brilliant impression as of Leila as vision of a woman
imflaming two men with passion enough to make them rivals into death, and
the power of the choirs denouncation, and the noble and bold singing of
Zurga when he with a sort of a "Con onor muore chi non puo serbar vita con
onore"-Aria sings Adieu, accepting his defeat standing upright, without any
grimace, any tear, or any sign of sentimentality, burned in the fire as the
victim of blind grim tragic events.  In addition the conductor Carlo Felice
Killario has a firm grip on the score, and cleverly understand to let the
music evolve onwards, the harmonies and sections develop out of each other
as the grammatical boxes of a conjunctive language develops for a skilled
writers pen.  As he leads it, The Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro Liceo di
Barcelona follows him sensetively and minuteously, seemingly to have him
getting the affair exactly as he wants it to be - the result of Cillarios
work is one that is much an expression of Zola then the "decadent"
Romanticism - and the orchestral playing can add to the features that
overcomes the slighly amateurish recording process, and make just this
performance to the best "Les Pecheurs de Perles" on record.

Mats Norrman
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