Love Is a Rebellious Bird That No One Can Tame (From Habanera in Bizet’s Carmen Opera)

 

 

It is Saturday and I picked up a book of poetry, as I do most weekends. My dog knows the routine, so he found his spot next to my painting easel and let go of a gentle sigh.

 

I did not read poetry in July. It was a difficult month and my mood was to melancholy. I was glad when August announced itself and the desert welcomed me back. So it was appropriate for me to reread for the n^th time the classic poem by Arthur Rimbaud “Une Saison en Enfer” (A Season in Hell).

But somehow, the famous lines of Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen drove me away from the poem. I started whistling and the lines kept repeating in my head:

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser

…
L'amour est enfant de bohème
Il n'a jamais, jamais, connu de loi

 

(Love is a rebellious bird
That no one can tame

…
Love is a bohemian child
He never, ever knew any law)

 

Hmm.

I searched for the B&W, 1964 video of Maria Callas singing Habanera. My favorite interpretations of that operatic passage from Carmen are by Callas and Elina Garanča. But today, the extraordinary coloratura voice of Callas was not what I desired. Rather it was Garanča’s mezzo-soprano timbre and her range of emotional interpretation that I was craving.

When I started playing Garanča’s Habanera as she portrayed the teasing and playful Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera in 2009 (my favorite of all her other interpretations over the years), I knew I had gotten over July. Even my dog opened his eyes and was happy to see me enjoying the moment. Then, he went back to sleep.

As the 6 or so minutes of the video were ending, I recalled another moment from a few years ago. I was reading poetry when I heard a loud hit on my window glass. I looked out and a hummingbird had misjudged its space and hit the glass in flight. I went out and picked up the bird, which to my delight, was alive but seemed in shock after the accident. I immediately took a picture with my phone hoping that it will “come to its senses“and fly away soon.

Which he did.

….I did not read Rimbaud today. But the memory of that moment when the hummingbird left my open palm reminded me of Habanera’s message.

 

August 2, 2025

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2025