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.
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 pianosalthough present-day listeners may discern a similarity to music of Franz Schubert.
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.[8] 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.
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.
