“L’AMOUR EST ENFANT DE BOHÊME, IL N’A JAMAIS CONNU DE LOI”: FIRST EDITION OF BIZET’S CARMEN, RARE AND IMPORTANT FIRST ISSUE

BIZET, Georges. Carmen. Opera Comique en 4 actes. Paris: Choudens Père et Fils, [1875]. Quarto, modern three-quarter red morocco gilt, raised bands.    $8000.

First edition, rare first issue, of Bizet’s masterpiece, the only edition of Carmen published during the composer’s lifetime.

Carmen famously killed Bizet. The reaction of the audience on opening night in March of 1875 was respectful if a bit confused; the reaction of the press, however, was vicious. “The majority violently condemned both libretto and music. The story was far too ‘obscene’ for the stage” (New Grove 2:760). “The composer was badly affected by the adverse criticism Carmen had received. Plagued by illness and obsessed by what he took to be his failure, he died in June” (Boyden, 303). The success of the Viennese production in October of that year quickly led to world-wide acclaim and insured its place in the canon of great operas. “Few artists have expressed so vividly the torments inflicted by sexual passion and jealousy… It is the rare quality of dramatic detachment, which Bizet shares with Mozart and Verdi, the power to sink himself in his characters and allow them to address and move us as suffering human beings, that (combined with his great gifts as a creative musician) gives Carmen its gripping power in the theatre, a power that time has not diminished” (New Grove 2:761).

Bizet arranged this piano-vocal score and corrected the proofs for the first issue of the first edition. Later issues cut three passages without Bizet’s authority, making this first issue the composer’s definitive version. The first edition of the piano-vocal score preceded the first publication of the full score by two years; indeed, because no edition of the full score was issued during Bizet’s lifetime, “there is still no satisfactory full score” (New Grove 2:761). Fuld, 585-86.

Some foxing. A very good copy, handsomely bound. Exceptionally scarce.