Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet (25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer and pianist of the Romantic era. He is best known for the opera Carmen.

Biography

Bizet was born at 28 rue de la Tour d'Auvergne in the 9th arrondissement of Paris in 1838. He was registered with the legal name Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, but he was baptised on 16 March 1840 with the first name Georges, and he was always known thereafter as Georges Bizet. His father Adolphe Armand Bizet (1810-86) was an amateur singer and composer, and his mother, Aimée Léopoldine Joséphine née Delsarte (1814-61), was the sister of the famous singing teacher François Delsarte.

He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music in 1848, a fortnight before his tenth birthday. His teachers there were Pierre Zimmerman (fugue and counterpoint; often assisted by Charles Gounod, his son-in-law), Antoine François Marmontel (piano), François Benoist (organ) and, on Zimmerman's death, Fromental Halévy, whose daughter he himself later married.

His first symphony, the Symphony in C Major, was written in November 1855, when he was just seventeen, evidently as a student assignment. It was unknown to the world until 1933, when it was discovered in the archives of the Paris Conservatory library. Upon its first performance in 1935, it was immediately hailed as a junior masterwork and a welcome addition to the early Romantic period repertoire. The symphony is noteworthy for bearing an amazing stylistic resemblance to the first symphony of Charles Gounod first played earlier in the same year, and which Bizet had arranged for two pianos although present-day listeners may discern a similarity to music of Franz Schubert, whose work was little known in France at the time the symphony was written.

In 1857, a setting of the one-act operetta Le docteur Miracle won him a share in a prize offered by Jacques Offenbach. He also won the music composition scholarship of the Prix de Rome, the conditions of which required him to study in Rome for three years. There, his talent developed as he wrote such works as the opera buffa Don Procopio (1858-59). There he also composed his only major sacred work, Te Deum (1858), which he submitted to the Prix Rodrigues competition, a contest for Prix de Rome winners only. Bizet failed to win the Prix Rodrigues, and the Te Deum score remained unpublished until 1971. He made two attempts to write another symphony in 1859, but destroyed the manuscripts in December of that year. Apart from this period in Rome, Bizet lived in the Paris area all his life.

His mother died shortly after his return to Paris, in September 1861. Around that time, the family maid, Mary Reiter, gave birth to a son. The boy was brought up to believe that his father was Adolphe Bizet, and that he was Georges's half-brother, but his mother later revealed that his true father was in fact Georges Bizet. His former teacher Halévy died in 1862, leaving his last opera Noé unfinished. Bizet completed it, but it was not performed until 1885, ten years after Bizet's own death.

He composed the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) for the Théâtre Lyrique in 1863, which was initially a failure. In 1866 he was contracted to arrange two of Ambroise Thomas's operas for both solo and duo piano. Then came La jolie fille de Perth (premiered also in the Théâtre Lyrique, in 1867), and a symphony titled Roma (1868).

On 3 June 1869 he married Geneviève, the daughter of his late teacher Fromental Halévy. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July of 1870, Bizet joined the French National Guard, as did some other well-known composers. This delayed his progress on several works. The armistice of January 1871 was followed by a civil uprising, which resulted in a two-month period of bloodshed and unrest in Paris. Bizet and his wife fled to Le Vésinet near Paris, to escape the violence.

Bizet wrote Jeux d'enfants (Children's games) for piano duet in 1871. The following year (22 May 1872) saw the production of the one-act opéra comique Djamileh, which is often seen as a precursor to Carmen. The popular L'Arlésienne was originally produced as incidental music for a play by Alphonse Daudet, first performed on 1 October 1872. Bizet himself derived a suite from the music (first performed 10 November 1872), and Ernest Guiraud later arranged a second suite; both these suites contain considerable rewriting of the original score. Most performances or broadcasts of the second suite omit any mention of Guiraud's contribution. His overture Patrie was written in 1873 (it had no connection with Victorien Sardou's play Patrie!).

Tomb of Georges Bizet in Père Lachaise Cemetery

Carmen (1875) is Bizet's best-known work and is based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by Prosper Mérimée. Bizet composed the title role for a mezzo-soprano. It was substantially composed during the summer of 1873, but not finished until the end of 1874, during which time his marriage came under severe strain and he separated from his wife for two months. Carmen premiered on 3 March 1875, and was not initially well-received, although it ran for 48 performances; it was Bizet's greatest success so far. Praise for it eventually came from well-known contemporaries including Debussy, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. Brahms attended over twenty performances of it, and considered it the greatest opera produced in Europe since the Franco-Prussian War. The views of these composers proved to be prophetic, as Carmen has since become one of the most popular works in the entire operatic repertoire. Bizet's most famous songs are the "Habanera" and "The Toreador's Song", both from Carmen.

However, Bizet did not live to see Carmen's success. He died from a heart attack at the age of 36 in Bougival (Yvelines), about 10 miles west of Paris. His death occurred on his sixth wedding anniversary, exactly three months after Carmen's first performance. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

His widow Geneviève later had an alliance with Élie-Miriam Delaborde, generally believed to have been the illegitimate son of Charles-Valentin Alkan. However, she married Émile Straus, a banker with Rothschild family connections, and became a noted society hostess. Marcel Proust used her as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes in his roman fleuve À la recherche du temps perdu. The Bizets' son Jacques (1872-1922), a writer, had been a school-friend of Proust.

Bizet's music has been used in the twentieth century as the basis for several important ballets. The Soviet-era Carmen Suite (1967), set to music drawn from Carmen arranged by Rodion Shchedrin, gave the Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya one of her signature roles; it was choreographed by Alberto Alonso. In the West the L'Arlesienne of Roland Petit is well-regarded, and the Symphony in C by George Balanchine is considered to be one of the great ballets of the twentieth century. It was first presented as Le Palais de Crystal by the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947, and has been in the repertory there ever since. The ballet has no story; it simply fits the music: each movement of the symphony has its own ballerina, cavalier, and corps de ballet, all of whom dance together in the finale.

Bizet's work as a composer has overshadowed how fine a pianist he was. He could easily have had a career as a concert pianist had he so wished. On 26 May 1861, at a dinner party at the Halévys at which Franz Liszt was present, Bizet gave a faultless performance of an elaborate work of Liszt's, reading at sight from the unpublished manuscript. Liszt proclaimed that Bizet was one of the three finest pianists in Europe. Bizet's pianistic skill was also praised by Hector Berlioz, his teacher Marmontel, and many others.

List of works

Dramatic works

A poster for a c. 1896 American production of Carmen, starring Rosabel Morrison

• La maison du docteur, opéra comique, 1 act, (H. Boisseaux; composed eitner in 1852 or 1855; unperformed)
• Le docteur Miracle, opérette, 1 act, (L. Battu & L. Halévy, after R.B. Sheridan; composed 1856; f.p. Paris, Bouffes-Parisiens, 9 April 1857)
• Don Procopio, opéra bouffe, 2 acts, (C. Cambiaggio, after L. Prividali; composed 1858-59; f.p. Monte Carlo, 10 March 1906)
• La prêtresse, opérette, 1 act, (P. Gille; composed ca. 1861; unperformed)
• La guzla de l'émir, opéra comique, (J. Barbier & M. Carré; composed ca. 1862; unperformed)
• Ivan IV, opéra, 5 acts, (F.-H. Leroy & H. Trianon; composed ca. 1862-65; f.p. Württemberg, Mühringen Castle, 1946)
• Les pêcheurs de perles, opéra, 3 acts, (E. Cormon & M. Carré; composed 1863; f.p. Paris, Théâtre Lyrique, 30 September 1863)
• La jolie fille de Perth, opéra, 4 acts, (J.-H. Vernoy de Saint-Georges & J. Adenis, after W. Scott); composed 1866; f.p. Paris, Théâtre Lyrique, 26 December 1867)
• Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre, opérette, 4 acts, (P. Siraudin & W. Busnach; composed 1867, Act I only, lost; f.p. Paris, Théâtre Athénée, 13 December 1867; the title was taken from the popular song "Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre")
• La coupe du roi de Thulé, opéra, 3 acts, (L. Gallet & E. Blau; composed 1868-69, after his death the autograph full score was mutilated by various hands and only fragments remain; f.p. (excerpts) BBC Radio, 12 July 1955)
• Clarisse Harlowe, opéra comique, 3 acts, (Gille & A. Jaime, after S. Richardson; composed 1870-71, incomplete; unperformed)
• Grisélidis, opéra comique, 1 act, (V. Sardou; composed 1870-71, incomplete; unperformed)
• Djamileh, opéra comique, 1 act, (Gallet, after A. de Musset; composed 1871; f.p. Paris, Opéra-Comique (Favart), 22 May 1872)
• L'Arlésienne, incidental music, 3 acts (A. Daudet; composed 1872; f.p. Paris, Théâtre Vaudeville, 1 October 1872)
• Don Rodrigue, opéra, 5 acts, (Gallet & Blau, after G. de Castro y Bellvis; composed 1872, incomplete draft; unperformed)
• Carmen, opéra, 4 acts, (H. Meilhac & L. Halévy, after P. Mérimée; composed 1873-74; f.p. Paris, Opéra-Comique (Favart), 3 March 1875)

Songs

(words by / year composed)

• L’âme triste est pareille au doux ciel (Lamartine)
• Petite Marguerite (Rolland, 1854)
• La Rose et l’abeille (Rolland, 1854)
• La Foi, l’Esperance et la Charité (de Lagrave, 1854))
• Vieille chanson (Millevoye, 1865)
• Adieux de l'hôtesse arabe (Hugo, 1866)
• Apres l’Hiver (Hugo, 1866)
• Douce mer (Lamartine, 1866)
• Chanson d'avril (Bouilhet, 1866)
• Feuilles d'album (1866): À une fleur (de Musset), Adieux à Suzon (de Musset), Sonnet (Ronsard), Guitare (Hugo), Rose d'amour (Millevoye), Le grillon (Lamartine)
• Pastorale (Regnard, 1868)
• Rêve de la bien-aimée (de Courmont, 1868)
• Ma vie a son secret (Arvers, 1868)
• Berceuse (Desbordes-Valmore, 1868)
• La chanson du fou (Hugo, 1868)
• La coccinelle (Hugo, 1868)
• La sirène (Mendès, 1868)
• Le Doute (Ferrier, 1868)
• L’Esprit Saint
• Absence (Gautier)
• Chant d’amour (Lamartine)
• Tarentelle (Pailleron)
• Vous ne priez pas (Delevigne)
• Le Colibri (Flan, 1868)
• Sérénade ‘Oh, quand je dors’ (Hugo)
• Vœu (Hugo, 1868)

• Voyage, Aubade, La Nuit, Conte, Aimons, rêvons!, La chanson de la rose, Le Gascon, N’oublions pas!, Si vous aimez!, Pastel, l'abandonnée (these songs are from unidentified unfinished dramatic works)

Works for solo piano

• Nocturne in F major
• Variation chromatiques de concert (orchestrated by Felix Weingartner in 1933)
• Caprice in C# minor
• Caprice in C major
• Chasse Fantastique
• Romance sans paroles in C major
• Thème brilliant in C
• Valse in C major
• Trois Esquisses Musicales
• Grande Valse de Concert in E flat
• Marine
• Nocturne in D major
• Chants du Rhin
• Four Préludes
• Jeux d'enfants (Children's Games) 12 pieces for piano duet.
  • L'escarpolette (Rêverie), La Toupie (Impromptu), La Poupée (Berceuse), Les Chevaux de bois (Scherzo), Le volant (Fantaisie), Trompette et tambour (Marche), Les Bulles de Savon (Rondino), Les quatre coins (Esquisse), Colin-maillard (Nocturne), Saute-mouton (Caprice), Petit mari, petite femme (Duo), Le Bal (Galop)

Other works

• Overture in A
• Symphony in C major, 1855
• Symphony in C major ("Roma")
• Petite Suite (five movements orchestrated from Jeux d'Enfants)
• Overture Patrie
• Ode Symphony Vasco de Gama
• Te Deum
• He compiled an orchestral suite using some pieces from his incidental music for L'Arlesienne. After his death, Ernest Guiraud put together a second such suite.

Completions of others' works

• Fromental Halévy - Noé, opéra, 3 acts (Saint-Georges; composed 1858-62 and left unfinished at Halévy's death; completed by Bizet; first performance Karlsruhe, 5 April 1885)

See also

• Category:Compositions by Georges Bizet

External links

• The Lied and Art Song Texts Page created and mantained from Emily Ezust Texts of the Melodies of Bizet with translations in various languages.
• Georges Bizet
• Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
• Bizet Biography
• Georges Bizet's Gravesite
• Mina Curtiss collection (research materials used by one of Bizet's biographers) in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Lettres à un ami, 1865-1872 (French) at Gutenberg.org

Free sheet music

• Free scores by Bizet at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Free scores by Georges Bizet in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Template:IckingArchive
• Carmen. Selections, piano (From the Sibley Music Library Digital Score Collection)
• Carmen Fantasie, for violin and piano (From the Sibley Music Library Digital Score Collection)
• L’Arlésienne : incidental music to the melodrama by Alphonse Daudet, for piano 4 hands (From the Sibley Music Library Digital Score Collection)

References

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