The Fate Motif
One of the most pervasive and recognizable musical ideas of the Carmen score is a short phrase sometimes called the “fate motif.” We hear it for the first time at the end of the prelude, immediately following the conclusion of the “Toreador” theme. The motif is made up of three musical elements: a fortissimo tremolo in the strings, a descending chromatic melody, and two foreboding, pulsating low notes played by the double bass and bass drum (Track 2).
The melody recurs several times throughout the opera, signaling to the listener that the action on stage relates to Carmen’s ultimate fate. It first returns in Carmen and Don José’s Act II duet (“Je vais danser en votre honneur”), when Carmen dances for José while accompanying herself on the castanets. He suddenly asks her to stop when he hears a signal calling the soldiers back to the barracks. She ignores his request and continues dancing until José reiterates that he must leave at once. Carmen’s mood immediately changes from playfulness to outrage and embarrassment, her seductions no match for the call of duty. José tries to reassure her of his love, but she remains unconvinced. Their disagreement reaches a fever pitch until José commands Carmen to listen to him. Then, as he draws from his vest the flower Carmen threw at him in Act I, the motif appears (Track 3). This scene’s profound shift in tone from flirtatious teasing to open conflict reflects the broader dramatic structure of the opera, which begins with lighthearted ribaldry and ends in tragedy. As this scene progresses, Carmen beseeches Don José to abandon his life of rules and order while he begs her for mercy. When they seem finally to part ways for good, the motif again returns, as if to suggest that the two lovers are not, in fact, finished with each other (Track 4).
The next time the motif returns in quite a different setting, where Don José is notably absent from the action. At the beginning of Act III, we learn that the smugglers have crashed their tractor trailer on the mountain pass. Carmen’s companions, Mercédès and Frasquita, tell their fortunes, and Carmen joins them in an ensemble piece known as the “Card Trio.” As the three women take turns learning their fates, the contrast becomes obvious. Mercédès will marry rich and inherit her husband’s fortune, while Frasquita will find a bold, powerful pirate who treats her to his lavish treasures. But Carmen’s cards spell only one thing: death. As she shuffles the cards and prepares to learn her fate, the motif appears three times in quick succession, played by the flute (Track 5) with pizzicato accents in the violins and violas. The motif repeats three more times before Carmen reveals her mortal destiny. This fate is sealed when the basses and cellos quickly repeat the motif at the conclusion of the trio.
The last recurrence of the motif, perhaps expectedly, is found just moments before Carmen and José’s final duet, where he stabs her to death in a jealous rage. In this instance, Bizet cleverly transforms one motif into another to signal Carmen’s ill-fated romance with the cowboy Escamillo and her murder at the hands of José. Before her final meeting with Escamillo, Carmen is warned by Mercédès and Frasquita that José is nearby, but she insists that she is not afraid. She waits outside the amphitheater where Escamillo is competing in a rodeo, and José approaches her. As soon as the rodeo begins offstage, the toreador motif—famously from the “Prelude” and “Toreador Song”—is heard softly on flute, followed by a series of descending chromatic lines in the strings echoing the fate motif (Track 6). This thematic collision suggests how Carmen is literally caught between her two loves.
The third time the toreador motif is heard, the end of the phrase morphs into the fate motif. Here, Bizet takes advantage of the similarity between the two themes. The end of the first phrase of the toreador motif is nearly identical to the fate motif, with one crucial difference: Where the toreador motif ends on an ascending gesture, the fate motif instead continues in a downward descent.
This likeness between the two motifs gives Bizet the opportunity, through rapid repetition, to convert one into the other. The shift in tone signals that Escamillo has left the scene, and José has reappeared to deliver Carmen’s fate once and for all, as the fate motif passes from the clarinets and bassoons to the strings—the violins and violas in quick 16th notes, the cellos and basses in foreboding eighth notes.