La Navarraise

Several months after the premiere of Bruneau’s L’Attaque du moulin–regarded as the first French naturalist opera–La Navarraisewas billed as a slice of contemporary life. It was Emma Calvé who suggested the storyline to Massenet, after a novella by Claretie. Anita, who needs to find a sufficiently large dowry to marry Araquil, makes a deal and fights for her honour at great risk to her life. The Spanish subject, the realistic tone and the twin themes of love and death driving the plot, provide clear links to Carmen. Furthermore, Calvé had just triumphed in the role of the cigarette girl (1892 at the Opéra-Comique) when she was already enthusiastically discussing this future production with Massenet. In the autumn of 1893, the composer was staying in the South of France and work on the opera progressed rapidly. He completed the piano vocal score on 24 November, the day he paid a visit to Mistral. With the addition of an orchestral interlude and incidental music using realist effects (solemn chiming bells, trumpet calls, firing of shots, drumrolls), the score was intended to be intense and incisive, eschewing pointless developments. Massenet wrote some wonderfully lyrical passages for his performers, while daring to include vocal writing which was regularly declaimed, even spoken. After London, Emma Calvé–“the incomparable singer-tragic actress” as Massenet called her–created the role in Paris (3 October 1895 at the Opéra-Comique) then in New York (11 December 1895 at the Metropolitan Opera), setting the seal on an ideal collaboration which was to be repeated with Sapho.