Georges Bizet, La jolie fille de Perth (1867)

It seems weird to me that Bizet's operas other than the big hit are so rarely performed.  It seems like they'd be an easy sell: hey, you know how much you like Carmen?  Well, here's another one by the same guy!  Well, be that as it may, here's this one, as subtitled and uploaded by the guy known as Nervous Gentleman, who sadly just disappeared three years ago.  Maybe he just too nervous to carry on.  Some CBD oil might help.

Here's how dumb I am: as I watched this, I kept thinking, okay, but what does this have to do with Western Australia?  I'm not really feeling the Antipodean ambiance.  Then I checked and found that, okay, Perth is also the name of a town in Scotland, and the opera is based on a novel by Walter Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth.  Okay then.  I still think it would be fun to do a production with kangaroos bouncing around the stage.

Honestly, that does take a little of the wind out of my sails: I really wanted to talk about a down-under opera, not some dumb Walter Scott thing.  Sadly, looking at a summary of the book, it doesn't seem to feature anything as awesome as the hero randomly drowning in quicksand for no reason.  Basically, there's this blacksmith named Henry who wants to marry a woman, Catherine, and she rejected him before but now she's not going to, until she mistaken leaps to the conclusion that he's involved with a gypsy fortune teller, Mab.  There's a duke who wants Catherine, but Mab goes to his place instead.  Catherine realizes that really, Henry's transgression was nothing and forgives him, but he's mad because he thinks she spent the night with the duke, which idea is backed up by the fact that the duke has a jewel he had given her (which she'd thrown away and Mab picked up--you can't think too hard about these things).  Anyway, some stuff happens, Catherine goes mad, but then Henry accepts her and she goes un-mad.  Really, you have to wonder what exactly these old-time people thought madness even was, if it could be turned on and off like a light switch.  It seems like it's just the same as having strong emotions about something.

The libretto's a bit clumsy, but musically, this is quite good, really.  On the whole, I'd definitely say I prefer it to Les pêcheurs de perles, even if there's no individual moment quite as good as "Au fond du temple saint."  I dunno.  Perform more Bizet operas, durnit!  His premature death was a tragedy, so we should celebrate his life and work as much as we can.