Fantaisie brillante sur Carmen (after Bizet)

Borne played flute in the orchestra of the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux and taught at the Toulouse conservatoire; of everything he wrote, this fantasy on Bizet's Carmen is the only piece still played. He assembled it in the decades after the opera's 1875 premiere, when operatic paraphrases were standard concert fare and every instrument had its Carmen. The habanera, the seguidilla, the Gypsy dance and the fate motif follow one another through variations demanding double-tonguing, wide leaps and considerable speed. The genre it belongs to has otherwise disappeared; this one survived as a flautist's proving piece.