Fishers without direction

In 1863, when Léon Carvalho, impresario of the Théatre-Lyrique in Paris, commissioned from the twenty-five year-old Bizet the opera that would become Les pêcheurs de perles, he did not set the composer up in the best conditions for success, giving him no more than two months to put to music the libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré, all the while creating problems during rehearsals. If the legend is to be taken as true, it is no wonder that during the last rehearsal, when the impresario heard the opera for the first time, he regretted that he had not provided Bizet with a better libretto: for in spite of the weakness of the text the composer had created a score rich in pleasant melodies, skillfully orchestrated, and with hints of the innovative musical language that he would later fully explore in Carmen. Furthermore, as several…