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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.

Contents

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 Bizet1, but he was baptised on 16 March 1840 with the first name Georges, and he was always known thereafter as Georges Bizet. His father was an amateur singer and composer, and his mother 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 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.2 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 3 first played earlier in the same year, and which Bizet had arranged for two pianos4 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.

At the Conservatoire Bizet studied under Fromental Halévy, whose daughter GeneviÚve he married in 1869. 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.

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 Bizet failed to win the Prix, and the Te Deum score remained unpublished until 1971.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. He composed the opera Les pĂȘcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) for the ThĂ©Ăątre Lyrique in 1863, which was initially a failure. He followed it with La jolie fille de Perth (premiered also in the ThĂ©Ăątre Lyrique, in 1867), a symphony titled Roma (1868), and Jeux d'enfants (Children's games) for piano duet (1871).

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.

That year (22 May 1872) also saw the production of the one-act opéra comique Djamileh, which is often seen as a precursor to Carmen. His overture Patrie was written in 1873 (it had no connection with Victorien Sardou's play Patrie!).

Tomb of Georges Bizet in PĂšre 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. Carmen was not initially well-received but 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. However, Bizet did not live to see its 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, only a few months after Carmen's first performances. He was buried in the PÚre Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

His widow Geneviùve 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. 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.5

List of works

Dramatic works6

  • La maison du docteur, opĂ©ra comique, 1 act, (H. Boisseaux; composed eitner in 1852 or 1855; unperformed)
  • Le docteur Miracle, opĂ©rette, 1 act, (L. Battu & L. HalĂ©vy, after R.B. Sheridan; composed 1856; f.p. Paris, Bouffes-Parisiens, 9 April 1857)
  • Don Procopio, opĂ©ra bouffe, 2 acts, (C. Cambiaggio, after L. Prividali; composed 1858-59; f.p. Monte Carlo, 10 March 1906)
  • La prĂȘtresse, opĂ©rette, 1 act, (P. Gille; composed ca. 1861; unperformed)
  • La guzla de l'Ă©mir, opĂ©ra comique, (J. Barbier & M. CarrĂ©; composed ca. 1862; unperformed)
  • Ivan IV, opĂ©ra, 5 acts, (F.-H. Leroy & H. Trianon; composed ca. 1862-65; f.p. WĂŒrttemberg, MĂŒhringen Castle, 1946)
  • Les pĂȘcheurs de perles, opĂ©ra, 3 acts, (E. Cormon & M. CarrĂ©; composed 1863; f.p. Paris, ThĂ©Ăątre Lyrique, 30 September 1863)
  • La jolie fille de Perth, opĂ©ra, 4 acts, (J.-H. Vernoy de Saint-Georges & J. Adenis, after W. Scott); composed 1866; f.p. Paris, ThĂ©Ăątre Lyrique, 26 December 1867)
  • Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre, opĂ©rette, 4 acts, (P. Siraudin & W. Busnach; composed 1867, Act I only, lost; f.p. Paris, ThĂ©Ăątre AthĂ©nĂ©e, 13 December 1867)
  • La coupe du roi de ThulĂ©, opĂ©ra, 3 acts, (L. Gallet & E. Blau; composed 1868-69, after his death the autograph full score was mutilated by various hands7 and only fragments remain; f.p. (excerpts) BBC Radio, 12 July 1955)
  • Clarisse Harlowe, opĂ©ra comique, 3 acts, (Gille & A. Jaime, after S. Richardson; composed 1870-71, incomplete; unperformed)
  • GrisĂ©lidis, opĂ©ra comique, 1 act, (V. Sardou; composed 1870-71, incomplete; unperformed)
  • Djamileh, opĂ©ra comique, 1 act, (Gallet, after A. de Musset; composed 1871; f.p. Paris, OpĂ©ra-Comique (Favart), 22 May 1872)
  • L'ArlĂ©sienne, incidental music, 3 acts (A. Daudet; composed 1872; f.p. Paris, ThĂ©Ăątre Vaudeville, 1 October 1872)
  • Don Rodrigue, opĂ©ra, 5 acts, (Gallet & Blau, after G. de Castro y Bellvis; composed 1872, incomplete draft; unperformed)
  • Carmen, opĂ©ra, 4 acts, (H. Meilhac & L. HalĂ©vy, after P. MĂ©rimĂ©e; composed 1873-74; f.p. Paris, OpĂ©ra-Comique (Favart), 3 March 1875)

Songs

(words by / year composed)

  • L’ñme triste est pareille au doux ciel (Lamartine)
  • Petite Marguerite (Rolland, 1854)
  • La Rose et l’abeille (Rolland, 1854)
  • La Foi, l’Esperance et la CharitĂ© (de Lagrave, 1854))
  • Vieille chanson (Millevoye, 1865)
  • Adieux de l'hĂŽtesse 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 Ă  Suzon (de Musset), Sonnet (Ronsard), Guitare (Hugo), Rose d'amour (Millevoye), Le grillon (Lamartine)
  • Pastorale (Regnard, 1868)
  • RĂȘve de la bien-aimĂ©e (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 sirĂšne (MendĂšs, 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)
  • SĂ©rĂ©nade ‘Oh, quand je dors’ (Hugo)
  • VƓu (Hugo, 1868)
  • Voyage, Aubade, La Nuit, Conte, Aimons, rĂȘvons!, La chanson de la rose, Le Gascon, N’oublions pas!, Si vous aimez!, Pastel, l'abandonnĂ©e (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
  • ThĂšme 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 PrĂ©ludes
  • Jeux d'enfants (Children's Games) 12 pieces for piano duet.
    • L'escarpolette (RĂȘverie), La Toupie (Impromptu), La PoupĂ©e (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
  • L'Arlesienne Suite #1 (also credited with most of Suite #2 as well)

Completions of others' works

  • Fromental HalĂ©vy - NoĂ©, opĂ©ra, 3 acts (Saint-Georges; composed 1858-62 and left unfinished at HalĂ©vy's death; completed by Bizet; first performance Karlsruhe, 5 April 1885)

Media
Entr'acte
The Entr'acte to Act I from Carmen
Entr'acte
The Entr'acte to Act III from Carmen
Entr'acte
The Entr'acte to Act IV from Carmen
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

See also

External links

Sister project Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Georges Bizet
Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Georges Bizet

Free sheet music

References

  1. ^ Sadie, Stanley (Ed.) [1992] (1994), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 1, A-D, chpt: "Bizet, Georges (Alexandre CĂ©sar LĂ©opold)" by Hugh MacDonald, New York: MacMillan. p. 485. ISBN 0-935859-92-6
  2. ^ Dean W., Bizet, London, J M Dent & Sons, 1978
  3. ^ Curtiss M., Bizet and his world, New York, Vienna House, 1958
  4. ^ Dean, 1978, ibid
  5. ^ Grove's Dictionary (V), vol. I, Georges Bizet, p. 731
  6. ^ Sadie, p. 489.
  7. ^ Dean, 1978, ibid.


Persondata
NAME Bizet, Georges
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bizet, Alexandre-CĂ©sar-LĂ©opold
SHORT DESCRIPTION Composer, Conductor
DATE OF BIRTH 25 October 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris, France
DATE OF DEATH 3 June 1875
PLACE OF DEATH Bougival, France

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