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Georges Bizet, Les Pêcheurs de perles - Diana Damrau sop, Matthew Polenzani ten, Mariusz Kwiecień bar, Nicolas Testé bass - The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Gianandrea Noseda cond - Penny Woolcock stage director - Erato 0190295893613 (1 DVD: 120 minutes [opera] and 15 minutes [bonus material])
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 December 2018
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References
1 Lacombe, Hervé, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Edward Schneider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 193–194Google Scholar.
2 Locke, Ralph, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 38–39Google Scholar.
3 Woolcock’s production originated at the English National Opera (ENO) in 2010 before arriving at the Met on New Year’s Eve in 2015. It was subsequently revived at ENO in 2016, presented at the Los Angeles Opera in 2017, and revived at the Met in 2018.
4 The references to dancing are excised from the English subtitles.
5 Lacombe, The Keys to French Opera, 87.
6 ‘Elle reconnaît Nadir, qu’elle aime aussi parce qu’il est ténor; elle n’aime pas Zurga, parce qu’il est baryton. C’est la règle aussi bien dans l’Inde qu’en Europe, a ce qu’il parait’. Nestor Roqueplan, ‘Théâtres’, review of Les Pêcheurs de perles by Georges Bizet, Le Constitutionnel (5 October 1863). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the French are my own.
7 The dramatic trope of the priestess breaking her vow of chastity was familiar to Parisian audiences from works such as Spontini’s La Vestale and Bellini’s Norma. Macdonald, Hugh, Bizet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 74Google Scholar.
8 ‘Le rôle, écrit successivement et d’acte en acte pour trois chanteuses d’aptitude diverse et de style différent, offrait de sérieuses difficultés à une voix unique’. Benoît Jouvin, ‘Théâtre-Lyrique’, review of Les Pêcheurs de perles by Georges Bizet, Le Figaro (8 October 1863).
9 Polenzani follows traditional performance practice by doubling the cor anglais line at the end of the number and ending the vocal line on the tonic pitch (A). In Bizet’s score, Nadir drifts off to sleep on an unresolved E (
), and it is the cor anglais that completes the melody by itself.
10 The familiar and crowd-pleasing ending to the duet was never sanctioned by Bizet. It is dramatically suspect in that it brings back Leïla’s theme just as the characters are singing about renouncing Leïla for the sake of their friendship. Macdonald, Bizet, 75.