Bizet in 150th anniversary year: rich and rare French offerings from Palazzetto Bru Zane

Georges Bizet was born on this day in 1838. He died at the tragically early age of 36, 150 years ago, and the anniversary year has brought forth for the most part only multiple productions of Carmen, his greatest masterpiece, with a spattering of Pearl Fishers (though not in the UK).

Despite the promise of so much more, he left behind plenty of other gems, and Palazzetto Bru Zane, lavishly well-endowed “Centre for French Romantic Music”, has been at the forefront of illuminating them with a revelation in Paris and four CDs of relative rarities.

The Palazzetto presentation sets - sumptuous in design, generous in background essays and astute in the choice of mostly Francophone artists – have frequently favoured student essays, attempts to win the prestigious Prix de Rome and several years at the Villa Medici in that city with relatively few strings attached. The Bizet "Portrait" – sixth in a series that has so far featured far less well-known composers Théodores Dubois and Gouvy, Félicien David, Marie Jaël and Fernand de La Tombelle – offers no revelations on that front, which might not be surprising if we bear in mind that Bizet was still in his teens (he entered the Paris Conservatoire just before his tenth birthday) while Berlioz, showing much of his authentic self in hia Prix de Rome candidates, had reached his mid-20s. Nevertheless there is none of the melodic genius of Bizet's well-loved Symphony in C, preceding the two candidates.

One was created as an exercise rather than a competition entry, and reassembled for a very belated premiere in 2024. Le retour de Virginie, in which the eponymous heroine’s brother Paul awaits the return of his childhood love to her native Mauritius, allows for some exquisite “tropical” orchestral touches, beautifully characterised by Lyon Opera Orchestra players under Ben Glassberg. And while the material may be standard fare, the singular, fast-vibratoed high French tenor Cyrille Dubois excels in his long aria, and is joined by two distinctive voices, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lessier as mother Marguerite and Patrick Bolleire as the hopelessly affirmative Missionaire des Pamplemousses. Dubois also appears in the later ode symphonique Vasco da Gama, but alongside its sea-music, the palm goes to soprano Melissa Pétit in the trousers role of sailor Leonard and her/his lively Bolero. She also charms with Dubois soaring above chorus and orchestra in Le Golfe de Baïa.

Clovis et Clotilde is what won Bizet the coveted prize, and its foursquare operatic hokum is probably exactly the sort of thing the committee wanted. What makes listening a pleasure is the thrust of Julien Chauvin's conducting and the trio of voices, absolutely the full-throttle best: Karine Gauvin, Julien Dran and Huw Montague Rendall, who gets to sing a rousing paean to Christian France. Musically the most mature and distinguished work for solo voices, the one-act opera Djamileh, wouldn’t pass muster on stage given its languishing, sexist orientalism, but is charmingly done under the baton of now-discredited François-Xavier Roth; there’s less need for it on CD, since a winning performance already exists featuring Lucia Popp and Franco Bonisolli, conducted by Lamberto Gardelli; it feels surprisingly idiomatic.

The tenor for the songs, Reinoud Van Mechelen, is less distinctive than Dran or Dubois, but the better numbers here are delivered with pure mezzo lustre by Adèle Charvet. Choruses and piano pieces, including arrangements of operatic choruses by Bizet’s favourite maître, Gounod. yield fewer rewards, but are all impeccably well done. 
The same can be said for the lighter half of the Chatelet double-bill, Le Docteur Miracle. Not the sinister figure of Les contes d’Hoffmann, the protagonist and his japes were a subject commanded by Offenbach to encourage young operetta composers, and the 18-year-old Bizet won joint first prize with Charles Lecocq. Having already endured two inept productions by British companies - can that omelette number ever be funny? - I knew this wouldn’t have me rolling in the aisles. But the French audience loved it, and director-designer-actor Pierre Lebon threw every trick in the book to try and make it work. The cast was excellent, especially mezzo Héloïse Mas showing a rich gift for campy comedy and a rich tenor, Marc Mauillon, as the trickster (pictured above by Thomas Amoureux: Mauillon, Dima Bawab. Lebon and Mas)

There was one reason, though, for taking the Eurostar to Paris – a rare chance to hear Bizet’s complete incidental music for Daudet’s melodrama L'Arlésienne, which I chose to cover some years back for BBC Radio 3's Building a Library. Each act is stacked with musical treasures, scored to perfection even in the theatrical original, smaller-scale than the better-known Suites. The tragedy of the unstable village youth Frédéri, obsessed to death by the “girl from Arles” who never appears and unfolding against lively scenes of rural Provençal life, would surely be worth seeing in the complete play, expanded from a short story. But what the team came up with here worked brilliantly, partly thanks to the riveting performance of Eddie Chignara as narrator (and sometime participant) Balthazar, and partly to the imaginative choreography. Chignara worked as a team with Lebon, taking on the role of Frédéri's simple brother known as L’Innocent, whose plaintive music we first hear in the prelude after the treatment of the local carol; it’s yoked to the anguish of Frédéri. Every number was perfectly shaped by the Orchestre chambre de Paris under Sora Elisabeth Lee, with the four soloists due to appear in Le Docteur Miracle acting as chorus. Maybe there are a few regrets for those who know the suites: the Adagietto, one of the most perfect slow movements in orchestral literature, unfolds in the form of spoken word against music known as mélodrame against a tender dialogue between two elderly people who loved and lost each other in earlier years (here voiced solely by Chignara). But it’s all worth hearing and, in this context, seeing, and this production is portable enough to travel. I hope at least there will be a film.

Watch Palazzetto Bru Zane's collaboration with Opéra de Rouen Normandie on a recreation of the 1875 Carmen

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