The ‘performance Urtext’ edition of the Carmen vocal score, edited by Richard Langham Smith and Clair Rowden.
Also available on the Edition Peters website are free resources including an extended preface, bibliography and a comparative table of metronome marks in the sources.
From the ‘old world’ to the ‘new’ and back again, this transnational history of the performance and reception of Bizet’s Carmen provides new understanding of the opera’s enduring yet ever-evolving and resituated presence and popularity.
From the migration of Spanish musicians to Paris after the defeat of the Napoleonic Regime at the Battle of Vitoria to the importance of Spanish spectacles on the Paris Stage, this book examines the mushrooming of French interest in Spain during the mid-nineteenth century.
It deals with the transformation of Mérimée's novella into Halévy's libretto and Bizet's opéra-comique, alongside its original staging. Other chapters examine 'The forgotten Englishman', 'Carmen's places' and 'Carmen the Gypsy'.
Find the striking and beautiful cover image of the first edition of the ‘Habanera’ in Japan from 1917, published by a Russian touring company ahead of the first full performance of Carmen in Japan in 1919. Or examine sets of the extraordinary opera-bull fights given in Nîmes in 1901!
