"Sweet money, you'll make my heart happy," young Toby suddenly exults, to the rhythm of a light waltz. His mad hope contrasts with the terrible predicament he has been addressing since the beginning of the air to the harmful power of money – "Dieu du mal, esprit fatalod of evil, fatal spirit!" The impoverished lover is unable to raise the thousand guineas that would enable him to claim the hand of the beautiful Eva, the doctor's daughter. The tenor Clément Debieuvre and the pianist and conductor Emmanuel Olivier gave life to the scene as they rehearsed Georges Bizet's La Maison du Docteur ("The House of the Doctor," 1855) in a studio on the Rue des Pyrénées in Paris, on Tuesday, March 18.
For two hours, the role was scrutinized through words and music, with the two performers passionately and relentlessly dissecting phrasing, tone and breathing, in order to restore to this short and lively comic opera all its Offenbach-style pastiche verve. The original version of the only opéra de salon written by 17-year-old Bizet will have its world premiere at the Festival Georges Bizet, of which the second edition runs from March 29 to April 6. This year's edition at the Villa Viardot in Bougival, west of Paris, will mark the 150th anniversary of the French composer's death. He died just a stone's throw away, on June 3, 1875, in the house on the banks of the Seine where he had completed the orchestration of Carmen a year earlier.
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