Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25 (Bizet)

• Sarasate, Pablo De

Spanish violin virtuoso and composer Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908) was a child prodigy raised in a musical family. Following an education at the Paris Conservatoire, which he entered at the age of twelve, he began life as a touring soloist while still a teenager. Taking popular operas and creating potpourris from their tunes was standard for a virtuoso such as Sarasate. Despite the failure of Georges Bizet’s (1838-1875) opera Carmen at its 1875 premiere, it began its conquest of the opera world soon after Bizet’s death. By the 1880s, the opera was extremely famous and successful, prompting Sarasate to add it to the list of other famous operas that he chose to craft into concert fantasies. He completed the orchestra version in 1881, premiering it in Madrid with the Sociedad de Concertos de Madrid, Mariano Vásquez conducting, on April 17 of that year. He produced a version with piano accompaniment a year later in 1882. Effectively in five movements (a prelude plus four movements) without pause, the work includes the following tunes from the opera: the Aragonaise (Entr’acte from Act Four), Habanera (Act One), an interlude (based on Carmen’s mocking treatment of Zuniga in Act One), the Séguidilla (aria from Act One), and the Bohemian/Gypsy Dance (Act Two). Upholding the dignity of the original opera from which it is derived, Carmen Fantasy (officially titled Concert Fantasy on themes from Bizet’s Carmen, Op. 25) remains one of Sarasate’s most popular operatic fantasies.

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