María del Carmen is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in three acts composed by Enrique Granados

Enrique Granados

Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...

 to a Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by José Feliú i Codina

Josep Feliú i Codina

Josep Feliu i Codina was a Catalan journalist, novelist and playwright whose work is linked to the Realist movement and to the Catalan Renaixença.-Biography:...

 based on his 1896 play of the same name. It was Granados's first operatic success and although largely forgotten today, he considered it to be his best opera. At the end of its initial run in Madrid where it premiered in 1898, Queen Maria Cristina

Maria Christina of Austria

Maria Christina of Austria was Queen consort of Spain as the second wife of King Alfonso XII of Spain...

 awarded Granados the Charles III Cross in recognition of his work. The opera, sometimes described as a Spanish version of Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana

Cavalleria rusticana

Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...

with a happy ending, is set in a village in the Spanish region of Murcia

Region of Murcia

The Region of Murcia is an autonomous community of Spain located in the southeast of the country, between Andalusia and Valencian Community, on the Mediterranean coast....

 and involves a love triangle between María (soprano) and her two suitors, the peasant farmer, Pencho (baritone), and his wealthy rival, Javier (tenor).

Background

A critic from the Diario de Barcelona recalled that following the 1896 premiere of Feliú i Codina's stage play María del Carmen, he heard another critic tell the author, "For God's sake don't allow anyone to set this to music." Nevertheless, Feliú i Codina, who had also written the libretto for a one-act zarzuela

Zarzuela

Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

 by Granados, Los Ovillejos, agreed to adapt his play for Granados's opera. The resulting libretto was a considerably shorted version of the original work as well as a simplification of the plot. However, it included additions such as a lavish village procession in Act 1 and a dance number during the fiesta

Festival

A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....

 in Act 2. Granados and Feliú i Codina put a fair amount of work into making the libretto 'authentic', travelling to rural Murcia to observe the region's landscape, culture, songs and speech patterns.. The composer Amadeo Vives

Amadeo Vives

Amadeu Vives i Roig was a Catalan Spanish musical composer, creator of over a hundred stage works. He is best known for Doña Francisquita, which Christopher Webber has praised for its "easy lyricism, fluent orchestration and colourful evocation of 19th Century Madrid—not to mention its memorable...

 was instrumental in securing the first performance of the opera in Madrid and helped coordinate the production with the Teatro Parish. During the orchestral rehearsals, Granados was assisted by Pablo Casals

Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...

, who also conducted a private performance of the opera at the Teatro Principal in Madrid prior to its official premiere.

The score of María del Carmen has had a checkered career. Granados had the original manuscript in his luggage when he was drowned in the 1916 sinking of the Sussex

Sussex (French passenger ferry)

Sussex was a cross-channel passenger ferry, which was built in 1896 by William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway . She became the focus of an international incident when she was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in 1916. Although severely damaged, she was...

by a German U-boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

. His luggage, and the Maria del Carmen score, were later recovered from the wreck. In 1939 Granados's son Victor brought the original score (together with original scores of three other works by Granados) to Nathaniel Shilkret

Nathaniel Shilkret

Nathaniel Shilkret was an American composer, conductor, clarinetist, pianist, business executive, and music director born in New York City, New York to an Austrian immigrant family.-Early career:...

 and signed a contract for publication of these works by Shilkret and Shilkret's son Arthur. However, objections raised by the rest of Granados's family prevented the works from being published. In December 2009 the complete original score of the opera was transferred to the library at the University of California at Riverside.

According to Walter Aaron Clark's account in Enrique Granados: Poet of the Piano, the only copies of the score available at the time Clark's Granados biography was written probably contain later revisions by Granados's son Eduardo.

Performance history

María del Carmen premiered at the Teatro de Parish in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 on 12 November 1898, conducted by the composer. It had a highly successful reception by the audience and the majority of the critics, and ran until 9 January 1899. Feliú i Codina was not there to share the composer's triumph. He had died the previous year at the age of 52. María del Carmen then premiered in Barcelona on 31 May 1899 at the Teatro Tivoli. On that occasion, the reception was considerably less warm than it had been in Madrid. The Catalan nationalist movement was on the rise as was the Renaixença movement

Renaixença

The Renaixença was an early 19th century late romantic revivalist movement in Catalan language and culture, akin to the Galician Rexurdimento or the Occitan Félibrige movements. The first stimuli of the movement date of the 1830s and 1840s, but the Renaixença stretches up into the 1880s, until it...

 to revive the Catalan language and culture. Sections of the audience were indignant that an opera with a Catalan composer and a Catalan librettist was set outside Catalonia and failed to incorporate Catalan music and themes. One contemporary critic suggested that the only applause came from a hired claque

Claque

Claque is an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs....

  Following its 11 performance at the Teatro Tivoli, the opera had a few performances in Valencia in 1899 and was sporadically performed in Madrid between May 1899 and January 1900. It then sank into virtual oblivion, apart from a 1935 revival at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu conducted by Joan Lamote de Grignon with the famous soprano Conchita Badía

Conchita Badía

Concepción Badía de Agustí was a Spanish soprano and pianist. Admired for her spontaneity, expressiveness, and clear diction, she was considered one the greatest interpreters of 20th century Spanish and Latin American art song...

 in the title role, and a few other performances in Spain in the 1960s.

Forty years later, the Spanish conductor Max Bragado-Darman prepared a new critical edition of the score, excerpts of which were performed in Murcia in a concert at the Teatro Circo de Orihuela on 23 March 2002 during the Festival Internacional de Orquestas de Jóvenes (International Festival of Youth Orchestras). In 2003 the score was then used for a fully staged production in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 at the Wexford Opera Festival

Wexford Festival Opera

The Wexford Festival Opera is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in South-Eastern Ireland during the months of October and November.-Festival origins under Tom Walsh, 1951 to 1966:...

. The production which opened on 23 October 2003 at the Theatre Royal, Wexford

Theatre Royal, Wexford

The Theatre Royal, was an opera house and performance venue in Wexford Ireland which opened in 1832 and closed in 2005. It was the home of the annual Wexford Festival Opera, and has now been replaced by Wexford Opera House.-History:...

 marked the first and (so far) only fully staged performances of María del Carmen outside Spain. The Wexford production was conducted by Max Bragado-Darman with stage direction by Sergio Vela and Diana Veronese in the title role. The most recent performance, although in concert version only, took place at the Gran Teatre del Liceu on 19 February 2006. It was conducted by Josep Caballé-Domènech with Ana María Sánchez in the title role.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, November 12, 1898 (Conductor: Enrique Granados)
María del Carmen	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Pencho, a peasant farmhand, in love with María	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Javier, a wealthy man, also in love with María	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Concepción	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
Fuensanta	soprano
Domingo, Javier's father	bass-baritone Bass-baritone A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
Don Fulgencio, the local doctor	tenor
Pepuso, an old villager	baritone
Migalo	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
Antón	tenor
Roque	baritone
Andrés	tenor
Un cantaor huertano (a village singer, off-stage voice)	tenor

Synopsis

Time: late 19th century

Place: a rural village in the Spanish province of Murcia

Region of Murcia

The Region of Murcia is an autonomous community of Spain located in the southeast of the country, between Andalusia and Valencian Community, on the Mediterranean coast....

Pencho, a peasant farmer, and María are in love. Pencho had wounded the wealthy Javier in a fight over water rights and fled to Algeria

Algeria

Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

. In order to save Pencho's life when he returns, María nurses Javier back to health, only to find that he has fallen in love with her too. The action of the opera begins with Pencho's return to the village. To Pencho's dismay, María tells him that she has agreed to marry Javier in order to save him from prosecution. Pencho protests that his honour cannot allow such a sacrifice. During a village fiesta there is a confrontation between Pencho and Javier and the two agree to fight a duel which becomes the focus of the third act.

As the duel approaches, Maria is distraught. While she still loves Pencho, she feels affection for Javier and does not wish to see him killed. Javier's father arrives and unsuccessfully tries to persuade Pencho to relinquish his claim on María. Javier appears and the duel is about to begin. However, tragedy is averted with the arrival of the local doctor, Don Fulgencio. He tells Domingo that Javier is already dying of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

and nothing can be done to save him. Javier then realizes the futility of the duel, reconciles with María and Pencho, and helps them to escape.

Recordings

María del Carmen - Diana Veronese (María del Carmen); Concepción (Larisa Kostyuk); Fuensanta (Silvia Vazquez); Jesús Suaste (Pencho); Dante Alcalá (Javier); Gianfranco Montresor (Domingo); David Curry (Don Fulgencio); Aleberto Arrabal (Pepuso); Stewart Kempster (Migalo); Ricardo Mirabelli (Antón); Alex Ashworth (Roque); Nicholas Sharratt (Andrés); Vicenç Esteve (Un cantaor huertano). Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus, Max Bragado-Darman (conductor). Recorded live at the Theatre Royal, Wexford on 23, 26 and 29 October 2003. Label: Marco Polo 8.225292-93

External links

• Review and photos of the 2003 Wexford performance of María del Carmen by Andrew Cooper on operajaponica.org
• Extracts from María del Carmen in MP3 format , performed by the Orquesta Internacional de Jóvenes Murcia 2002 on the official web site of Festival Internacional de Orquestas de Jóvenes.