Bizet entered the Paris Conservatory of Music in October, 1848, a fortnight before his tenth birthday. His teachers there were Pierre Zimmermann (fugue and counterpoint; often assisted by his son-in-law Charles Gounod), Antoine François Marmontel (piano), François Benoist (organ) and, on Zimmermann's death, Fromental Halévy, whose daughter Bizet later married. He won first prizes for organ and fugue in 1855, and he completed his earliest compositions there.
Bizet's first symphony, the Symphony in C, was written in November 1855, when he was 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 bears a stylistic resemblance to the first symphony of 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. 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 Bizet failed to win the Prix Rodrigues, and the Te Deum score remained unpublished until 1971.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.
Shortly after leaving Rome in July 1860, but while still touring in Italy, he had the idea of writing a symphony in which each of the four movements would be a musical evocation of a different Italian city – Rome, Venice, Florence and Naples. On hearing of his mother's serious illness he cut short his Italian travels and returned to Paris in September 1860; she died a year later. The Scherzo of the symphony was completed by November 1861, but it was not until 1866 that the first version of the whole symphony was written. He subjected it to a number of revisions through to 1871, but died before ever producing what he considered the definitive version. For this reason, the work is sometimes described as "unfinished", but this is an inaccurate description as it was fully scored. It was published after his death in 1880 as the Roma Symphony.
In June 1862 the Bizet family's maid, Marie Reiter, gave birth to a son, Jean Bizet. 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 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.
Bizet composed the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), a drama of love and ritual in Ceylon for the Théâtre Lyrique in 1863; it was initially a failure. In 1866, Bizet was hired to arrange two of Ambroise Thomas's operas for both solo and duo piano. The works of his youth displayed his power of evoking exotic atmosphere such as La jolie fille de Perth (after Walter Scott's novel), which takes place in a romanticized Scotland (premiered also in the Théâtre Lyrique, in 1867). Although these operas were not overwhelmingly successful, they established Bizet's reputation as a composer to be reckoned with.
On 3 June 1869, Bizet married Geneviève Halévy (1849–1926), the daughter of his late teacher Fromental Halévy. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in July 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. From November 1871 until his death Bizet was a member of the Conservatoire examination committees for composition, counterpoint and fugue, and for piano and harp.
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. He wrote incidental music for the play L'Arlésienne by Alphonse Daudet, first performed on 1 October 1872. Bizet derived a L'Arlésienne Suite from the music (first performed 10 November 1872), and Ernest Guiraud later arranged a second suite; both contain considerable rewriting of the original score (many performances 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!). Carmen (1875) is Bizet's best-known work and is based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by the French writer 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, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and was not initially well-received, although it ran for 37 performances in the next three months, an average of three a week; it was Bizet's greatest success so far. Bizet had put every ounce of his genius into Carmen, and its lukewarm reception was a bitter disappointment. 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. Carmen contains two of Bizet's most famous songs, the "Habanera" and "The Toreador's Song", which compete for popularity with the tenor-baritone duet "Au fond du temple saint" ("In the depths of the temple") from The Pearl Fishers.
However, Bizet did not live to see Carmen's success. He died from heart failure at the age of 36 in Bougival (Yvelines), about 10 miles west of Paris. It has been suggested that Élie-Miriam Delaborde, who was believed to be the illegitimate son of Charles-Valentin Alkan, may have been indirectly responsible for Bizet's death, which followed a swimming competition between the two, as a result of which Bizet caught a chill. Murder or even suicide were suspected at the time, as what was described as a "gunshot wound" appeared to be on the left side of his neck. However, this was most likely a lymph node which swelled and perforated. He almost certainly died with a systemic streptococcal infection, consistent with his lifelong medical history.
Bizet died on his sixth wedding anniversary, exactly three months after Carmen's first performance. His death came just when he had found his mature style. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, alongside other greats like Chopin and Rossini. Carmen was then immediately dropped by the Opéra-Comique. Yet within three years, it had made its way to Vienna, Brussels, London, New York City, and soon to Germany and Russia, also. Five years later, Carmen returned to Paris, where it was received rapturously and launched on its long-running success. Today it is one of the world's best-loved operas.
Bizet was also a magnificent sight-reader. 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 sight-reading skill was also praised by Hector Berlioz, his teacher Marmontel, and many others. Berlioz wrote in the "Journal des Débats" on 8 October 1863, His talent as a pianist is so great that no difficulty can stop him when sight-reading orchestral scores. After Liszt and Mendelssohn one could see few sight-readers of his ability.
Bizet's music was 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 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 it 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.
Category:1838 births Category:1875 deaths Category:Musicians from Paris Category:Alumni of the Conservatoire de Paris Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:French composers Category:Opera composers Category:Prix de Rome for composition Category:Romantic composers
ar:جورج بيزيه an:Georges Bizet be:Жорж Бізэ bg:Жорж Бизе ca:Georges Bizet cs:Georges Bizet cy:Georges Bizet da:Georges Bizet de:Georges Bizet et:Georges Bizet es:Georges Bizet eo:Georges Bizet fa:ژرژ بیزه fr:Georges Bizet gl:Georges Bizet ko:조르주 비제 hy:Ժորժ Բիզե hr:Georges Bizet io:Georges Bizet id:Georges Bizet it:Georges Bizet he:ז'ורז' ביזה ka:ჟორჟ ბიზე sw:Georges Bizet la:Georgius Bizet lv:Žoržs Bizē lb:Georges Bizet lt:Georges Bizet hu:Georges Bizet mk:Жорж Бизе mr:जॉर्जेस बिझेत ms:Georges Bizet mn:Жорж Бизе nl:Georges Bizet ja:ジョルジュ・ビゼー no:Georges Bizet oc:Georges Bizet pl:Georges Bizet pt:Georges Bizet ro:Georges Bizet qu:Georges Bizet ru:Бизе, Жорж sc:Georges Bizet scn:Georges Bizet simple:Georges Bizet sk:Georges Bizet sl:Georges Bizet sr:Жорж Бизе fi:Georges Bizet sv:Georges Bizet tt:Georges Bizet th:ฌอร์ฌ บีแซ tr:Georges Bizet uk:Жорж Бізе zh-yue:比才 zh:乔治·比才
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.