Background
Georges Bizet was born in Paris on 25 October 1838 into a musical family, both his father and a maternal uncle were singing teachers.
Georges Bizet was born in Paris on 25 October 1838 into a musical family, both his father and a maternal uncle were singing teachers.
Georges Bizet entered the Paris Conservatory at the age of nine. He studied piano, organ, and theory.
Bizet's first preserved compositions, two wordless songs for soprano, date from around 1850.
When he finally won the much coveted Prix de Rome in 1857, he had already composed a Symphony in C major comparable in quality with the works of Mozart and Mendelssohn written at the same age, and his one-act operetta Le Docteur Miracle had been awarded a first prize in the competition initiated by Jacques Offenbach.
Despite the manifest influence of Gounod and Giacomo Meyerbeer, its lyrical charm and exotic coloring have won it an honorable place in the French operatic repertory.
Despite his gifts Bizet found it difficult to make a living, and he was obliged to undertake a large amount of hackwork for music publishers.
In fact it might not unfairly be said that Bizet, despite his musical precocity, remained emotionally immature until after the age of 30 and this prevented him from rising to his full stature as an artist.
His music for L'ArlésienneL'Arlesienne represents a further advance, for in these suites he was able to evoke in a few dances, intermezzos, and "melodrames" not only the atmosphere of Provence but the lyrical or tragic elements of the drama. A worthy field for the development of these remarkable gifts was offered him for the first time by the excellent libretto on which he next set to work - a dramatized version of Prosper Mérimée'sMerimee's Carmen, compiled by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Halevy.
Bizet started to compose this in 1872, but the first performance, at the Paris Opéra-Comique, Opera-Comique, was not until Mar. 3, 1875.
During May he had suffered from one of the recurrent attacks of throat trouble to which he was subject, and on June 1 this became alarmingly worse.
Martin CooperCarmen.
Georges Bizet's opera Carmen was not a success at first because, absurd though this charge may seem today, its sustained melodic line and use of recurrent themes were accused of being Wagnerian.
But this was all new and shocking in the Opéra-ComiqueOpera-Comique in 1875, as was the raw, even brutal realism of the scenario, and the work's present enormous popularity was very gradually acquired.
There have been several movie versions of Carmen, notably a searingly intense, stylized version by Carlos Saura in 1983. In 1943 a modernized adaptation by Oscar Hammerstein II, Carmen Jones, was produced on Broadway with an all-black cast.
Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857.
Carmen
Bizet's marriage to Geneviève Halévy was intermittently happy and produced one son.
