CONCEPT The pearl fishers is a story of love versus friendship. It poses very modern and contemporary dilemma’s in a rather enigmatic setting. Bizet situates his work in Ceylon (nowadays Sri Lanka) but it is very certain that he himself had never been there. So we can safely assume that the choice of Ceylon was made for the sheer mystical and mysterious aura that surrounded the place in the mid 19th century. Mysterious Ceylon stood for everything that was “en vogue” in that time. There was a renewed colonialism which sparked a enormous wave of exoticism in the western world. One of the trends was the passion for far away and forgotten cultures. Bizet proved very modern in choosing his theme and place. Just then photography had become a means of really looking into other worlds and the west was flooded with photographs. If we look at pictures from around that time from Ceylon we see a almost fairy tale like environment with both ornate clad rich people and tons of pictures of very scarcely clad women. This leads us to believe that Ceylon was in the eyes of the Parisian elite not only mysterious, but also a very sexy place. No wonder that the young Bizet chose this enchanted island as decor for his work packed with passion, esoteric wonder, and fiery emotion. Paris, with it’s blooming arts and free morals, was exactly the spot where a new modern and sexy opera would go over well. Other productions Strangely enough we find very little of that in the contemporary stagings of today. The opera is either staged as an overly Indian costume drama with lots of dark tones and overbearing formless textiles (Venice, Brno) or as a modern dress production (Met, Reisopera, Vienna). The moment we see some attempts bring reality to the stage it often is rather cheaply and ill conceived and modern to boot (Mexico Bella Artes). Almost nowhere we see the creatives look through Bizet’s eyes: A young vibrant man in his powers years surrounded by art by Monet, Rodin and Degas. The Eiffel tower on the verge of being build, Le Moulin Rouge, Le chat noir in short: he was living in the capital of the world. Not calvinistic but exuberant. Real Fairy Tale I believe we should look at the Pearl-fishers as “stuff that dreams are made off”. 11
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