Djamileh: opéra-comique en un acte: op. 24 by George Bizet

Abstract

Reviewed by: Djamileh: opéra-comique en un acte: op. 24 by George Bizet Ralph P. Locke George Bizet. Djamileh: opéra-comique en un acte: op. 24. Critical edition by Hugh Macdonald. Norwich, England: Fishergate Music, 2020. (Bizet’s Other Operas; v. 1) [Preface and critical report in English. Paperback. ISMN 97909002245403. £95 ($132.75).] THE SERIES Georges Bizet is a composer whom, until recently, the music-publishing industry has largely failed. One of his operas (La maison du docteur) has never been published, and the others have often circulated in editions that are seriously flawed (and, in most cases, were released solely as piano-vocal scores). In the 1960s, Carmen was treated to a supposed critical edition by Fritz Oeser that, confusingly, inserted into the main text certain passages that Bizet himself demonstrably rejected. (To its credit, Oeser’s edition helped many opera companies reinstate the work’s spoken dialogues and remove the recitatives. The latter were composed by Ernest Guiraud—after Bizet’s early death—for the benefit of international opera houses where spoken dialogue was never used, such as in Vienna or indeed at the Paris Opéra. Still, the recitatives are effective and helpful because singers know them and can often sing more convincingly than speak. As a result, the recitatives are still widely used today, in whole or part.) Similarly, The Pearl Fishers is widely published and often performed in a version whose final trio may not be by Bizet and whose most famous duet (for Nadir and Zurga) uses an inauthentic ending. This ending, which is still heard at the Met and elsewhere, brings back a tune one final time that all opera lovers rightly adore. In the process, it sacrifices the dramatically more appropriate let-us-be-friends-again cabalette with which Bizet himself (and his quite capable librettists) closed the number. The Carmen situation has been alleviated in recent years by more capable critical editions from the hands of Robert Didion (1992), Richard Lang-ham Smith (1999, with a revision in progress; full score currently available only on rental), and Michel Rot (2009; it includes, like Oeser, some rejected material). And I hear that Bärenreiter is preparing its own critical edition. The Pearl Fishers situation is stymied by the fact that the original manuscript remains in private hands and inaccessible. Still, Hugh J. Macdonald, the renowned authority on nineteenth-century French music, has made a [End Page 122] critical edition that comes much closer to what Bizet intended. The score and parts that he prepared can be rented, and have been used by numerous opera houses (though some still insist on ending the men’s duet by bringing back that gorgeous big tune). Macdonald has now undertaken to make critical editions of the six other operas by Bizet that survive in a form complete enough to be staged. Two of the operas are short enough to be included in a single volume, making five volumes in all. Macdonald wittily (ruefully? invitingly?) entitles the series “Bizet’s Other Operas.” Here we have the first of the five volumes: Macdonald’s edition of the one-act Djamileh, on a delightful text by Louis Gallet. Djamileh (the character’s name is roughly equivalent to Jamila in English spelling) was first performed, with mixed success, at the Opéra-Comique in 1872. This was nine years after The Pearl Fishers and a scarce three years before Carmen. So we are dealing here with a work by a fully mature master. (Bizet would die at thirty-six, three months after the Carmen premiere.) The subsequent volumes are to include: vol. 2: Don Procopio (on an Italian libretto), vol. 3: La jolie fille de Perth (of which there is a fine recording with June Anderson), vol. 4: La maison du docteur and Le docteur Miracle, and vol. 5: Ivan IV (which Bizet completed except for the orchestration of the final two numbers; several recordings exist, featuring such major singers as tenor Henri Legay). THE WORK The fullest and most up-to-date accounts of Djamileh and its history are to be found in Hervé Lacombe’s magisterial biography, Bizet (Paris: Fayard, 2000), and Macdonald’s recent...