Georges Bizet tends to be known almost entirely as the composer of the opera Carmen. Those more familiar with his catalog probably also think of the incidental music he composed for Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne; and many concert-goers have probably encountered one of his earliest compositions, his four-movement symphony in C major. However, in the period prior to L’Arlésienne, he composed a set of twenty art songs first published in 1873 as his Opus 21.
Justina Gringytè on the cover of her new album (from its Amazon.com Web page)
The performance of this collection was recently recorded by mezzo Justina Gringytè, accompanied at the piano by Malcolm Martineau. It was released on the Ondine label, and is now available through an Amazon.com Web page. To put this in a more familiar historical context, Bizet began his work on Carmen in 1873; but it would be fair to say that none of the Opus 21 songs presage the vocal writing for that opera. Indeed, if one is to go by the Wikipedia page of Bizet’s compositions, no further art songs were written after Carmen.
Listening to Gringytè’s performances, I am definitely impressed with her delivery. I also found myself wondering if these songs were a “warm-up” for the music that would eventually be sung by Carmen herself, who is also a mezzo. Nevertheless, I felt that Bizet was more in his element in a narrative setting, rather than dealing with the poets (such as Victor Hugo) that provided the texts for the Opus 21 collection. Indeed, I had previously discussed that feeling this past May when harmonia mundi released its three-CD album accounting for all of the Bizet art songs composed for voice and piano. On that occasion, I cited Winton Dean’s assessment of “an unimaginative repetition of the same music for each verse;” and, as far as I am concerned, that assessment still stands!
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