Toreador, en garde! Toreador! Toreador!
These words evoke what is, arguably, the most instantly and universally recognizable tune in opera. They start the refrain of the aria "Votre toast," familiarly known as the "Toreador Song" from Act 2 of Bizet's 1875 opera "Carmen." You don't have to be an opera buff to recognize the melody. Once you've heard it you'll never forget it. Anyone who's made it to adulthood in Western civilization knows the tune.
"Votre toast" is sung in the opera by the bullfighter Escamillo, a relatively small leading role. He is there as a foil for the tenor, Don Jose, who gives up his career for the eponymous gypsy. After his entrance solo turn, Escamillo reappears at the end of Act 3, then just before the final scene in a duet with Carmen that takes less than two minutes.
Baritone Morgan Smith, who will portray Escamillo in Pittsburgh Opera's production at the Benedum Center, says, "Escamillo is one of those roles that gives the audience the illusion that he's on stage more than he really is. His music is on stage sometimes when he isn't. And like Don Giovanni, he's a kind of spokesperson for [conventional] masculinity. You have to be careful not to become a caricature."
The New York-raised baritone, now based in Seattle, first sang Escamillo in 2007. At 40, he has sung all the smaller baritone and bass-baritone parts in this opera. This will be his fifth production as the toreador.
The word "toreador" was invented by "Carmen's' librettists, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy, who needed a four-syllable word to fit Bizet's melody. The French word for bullfighter is torero (same as in Spanish). Escamillo's counterpart in Prosper Merimee's novella, on which the libretto is based, is referred to as a picador. In any case, toreador quickly entered the language. Merimee's novella, significantly, is the story of the downfall of Don Jose, not the tragedy of Carmen.
Mr. Smith finds the role's biggest challenge in the third act: "maintaining calm and control after the knife fight. It's a great moment to assert Escamillo's place in the love triangle. He provokes Jose to lose his marbles and become a violent man."
"Votre toast" is in the form of couplets: two rhymed verses repeating the same music with different words, each followed by the same refrain. Couplets were common in the French operettas of Bizet's time, similar to songs in a Broadway musical. The two verses describe the excitement of being in the ring. The refrain mentions that when it's over, the love of a dark-eyed woman will await him: "L'amour t'attend." In a telling detail near the end of the couplets, Carmen's friends Frasquita and Mercedes each sing, "L'amour," rather perfunctorily, with Escamillo responding in kind. Then Carmen sings the word, with Escamillo responding, and you know they really mean it.
In its original form, "Carmen" was, in fact, not far from what we think of as a musical -- an opera comique, which does not mean comic opera, but rather a piece with spoken dialogue in between the musical numbers. "Carmen" has elements of the operette -- the strophic songs and dance numbers -- but turns serious halfway through and has a tragic denouement.
The opera's first run in Paris was only a moderate success, and Bizet died from a heart attack at 36, three months after the premiere. He didn't live to see "Carmen" become a cultural icon, but he had a contract for a production at the Vienna Court Opera (now the Staatsoper), which wanted a grand opera format with continuous music. After the composer's death, his friend and student, Ernest Guiraud, composed recitatives to replace the spoken dialogue, and this became the standard version of "Carmen" for more than a century -- longer and more ponderous than Bizet's original. Now, with the prevalence of supertitles that give instant translations, many companies, including Pittsburgh Opera, have reverted to the opera-comique version.
Some singers find the French dialogue an added burden, but Mr. Smith prefers it.
"It brings the opera back to earth," he says. "If we are doing our job as singers, the sung parts should come through as if they were spoken. Singing should not create some wall."
Conveying the emotional content is the most important thing, he adds. "If people are good storytellers, they're going to be good singers."
First Published: March 19, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
