Georges Bizet

French composer

• Born: October 25, 1838
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: June 3, 1875
• Place of death: Bougival, near Paris, France

Bizet was one of the foremost French composers of the nineteenth century and the author of one of the most popular operas of all time, Carmen. His influence on later generations is difficult to measure, but it is clear that he was one of the greatest musical geniuses of nineteenth century Europe.

Early Life

Georges Bizet (bee-zay) was an only child of musically inclined parents. His father, Adolphe Arnaud Bizet, was a teacher of voice and a composer. His mother, Aimée Marie Louise Léopoldine Joséphine Delsarte, was a gifted pianist. Bizet began informal music studies with his mother at the age of four. Groomed for a musical career, at the age of eight he began piano lessons with the celebrated teacher Antoine François Marmontel and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire shortly before his tenth birthday. A brilliant student, Bizet excelled in his courses, winning the Premier Prix in solfège (sight-singing) and in Marmontel’s piano class. His virtuosity was such that he could easily have launched a concert career in his late teens, had he wished to do so. The young Bizet, however, had his heart set on becoming a composer.

Bizet’s first attempts in composition date from 1850, when he was twelve years old. His early works consist of virtuosic piano pieces, choruses, and a one-act comic opera. Bizet’s first major work, the Symphony in C, was composed when he was seventeen. Aside from an abundance of charming themes, this work displays a mastery of orchestration unusual in a composer at any age.

In 1857, Bizet won the prestigious Prix de Rome for his cantata Clovis et Clotilde . That enabled him to travel to Rome, where he remained for three years, imbibing Italian culture and refining his skills as a composer. During this time, his attitude toward composition changed drastically. Always a composer of immense natural gifts, he decided to adopt a more rational approach to writing music. This, however, produced an identity crisis that resulted in a creeping paralysis of his creative powers and a series of projected and abandoned works.

Bizet’s problems in Rome were compounded when the Académie des Beaux-Arts, under whose aegis the Prix de Rome was offered, refused to accept his opera Don Procopio (1859) in place of the mass he had originally been obliged to write according to the stipulations of the prize. Bizet, for whom the Christian faith held little appeal, was reluctant to write religious music. An ode-symphony, Vasco de Gama (1860), was brought to completion and accepted by the Académie.

Life’s Work

In 1860, Bizet returned to Paris, where he persisted in his desire to forge a career as a composer, even in the face of tempting offers to teach and make concert appearances. In 1861, he presented his third submission to the Académie in the form of the Scherzo et marche funèbre and an overture entitled La Chasse d’Ossian , both of which were well received. His final submission, in 1862, was a one-act comic opera, La Guzla de l’émir . Though the music for this opera has disappeared, much of it was incorporated into Bizet’s first important stage work, Les Pêcheurs de perles . Premiered in 1863, it was received coolly by the critics, who criticized its apparent imitation of Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi in orchestration, harmony, and dynamics.

By 1863, Bizet’s Rome pension had run out, and he was compelled to earn a living making transcriptions and arrangements for the publishers Choudens and Heugel. The sixteen-hour days he often worked affected his health, which had never been good. Since childhood, he had suffered from a chronic ulceration of the throat that continued to bother him and that would eventually prove fatal. He was also afflicted with articular rheumatism. Nevertheless, he found the time to begin a new operatic endeavor, Ivan IV , which, though finished in 1865, was never produced.

Bizet’s next opera, composed in 1866, was La Jolie Fille de Perth , based on the 1828 novel The Fair Maid of Perth by Sir Walter Scott. It premiered in December of the following year and was reviewed enthusiastically by the press, the only one of his operas to be so received. During the period 1865-1868, Bizet wrote a considerable amount of piano music, most of which, though published, remains obscure. Full of effects in imitation of the orchestra, these pieces also reveal Bizet’s ongoing fascination with Lisztian virtuosity as well as with the works of Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann. He also composed a number of songs, the finest of which is “Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe” (1866).

In 1868, Bizet underwent another period of soul-searching as a composer, resulting again in a series of aborted projects. He also endured a severe bout of quinsy. Adding to his despair was the rejection of a new opera, La Coupe du roi de Thulé , which he had submitted in a competition sponsored by the Paris Opéra. In the following year, at the age of thirty-one, Bizet married Geneviève Halévy, the daughter of his former composition teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. Their union was not a harmonious one, as she came from a family with a history of mental illness and was herself emotionally unstable. Their only child, Jacques, born in 1872, inherited this trait and committed suicide when he was fifty.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Bizet enlisted in the National Guard and remained with his wife in Paris. After the war, Bizet resumed work on two operas, Clarissa Harlowe and Grisélidis, neither of which reached completion. These were followed, however, by his opera Djamileh , a one-act work with a libretto by Louis Gallet, which premiered in May, 1872. Bizet’s highly original harmonies bewildered audiences and annoyed the critics. As a result, the opera was a complete failure.

Among Bizet’s most engaging works for orchestra is the incidental music to Alphonse Daudet’s L’Arléssienne , a melodrama produced at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in October, 1872. Once again, the production was ill-fated, and Bizet’s music was not well received. Nevertheless, the individual numbers, twenty-seven in all, are brilliant studies in orchestration. Four of them were arranged by Bizet for full orchestra (the original scoring having been for a small ensemble of twenty-six performers), and the resulting suite, premiered the following month, was greeted with approval by audiences and critics alike.

It was in the year 1872 as well that Bizet began work on his most important opera, one that would elevate him, though posthumously, to greatness. He was offered the services of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy as librettists and chose Prosper Mérimée’s novel Carmen (1845; English translation, 1878) as his subject. Already by 1873 the first act was completed, and in the summer of 1874 the score was finished. Some aspects of the opera were controversial from the outset, especially its conclusion with a murder, which was unprecedented at the Opéra-Comique.

Bizet’s realistic portrayal of the seamier aspects of Merimée’s Carmen , as well as his highly original and difficult music, caused considerable consternation among the proprietors of the theater. The opera’s initial reception in the spring of 1875 seemed to confirm their worst fears. It was dismissed as obscene and Wagnerian, though it ran for forty-eight performances in its first year. It was successfully staged in Vienna in October, 1875, and this led directly to its worldwide popularity.

Bizet’s brilliant musical characterization of the principal characters, José and Carmen, his exploitation of exotic musical material and colorful orchestration, and his depiction of violent human emotion imbue the opera with a sensual vitality and pathos that continue to enthrall modern audiences. It is worth noting, however, that Bizet never set foot in Spain and did not utilize Spanish musical folklore extensively, though he did resort to quoting a few popular songs of the day.

Bizet, dejected at the poor reception of Carmen and suffering from a bout of quinsy, became seriously ill in May, 1875. His condition worsened when he contracted rheumatism and a high fever. That was followed by a heart attack on June 1, and he died two days later, during the early morning of his wedding anniversary. In a funeral ceremony attended by four thousand people, he was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Significance

Although he lived for the relatively short span of thirty-seven years, Georges Bizet produced a sizable body of work. His output—encompassing some twenty-seven operas, ten orchestral works, more than fifteen choral works, and dozens of songs and pieces for piano—was prodigious but uneven. He showed scant interest in writing chamber music, solos for instruments other than piano, or concerti. The love for literature that he displayed early in life probably dictated his preference for writing music that had some dramatic or literary connection. Bizet is an example of a composer who has suffered from his own success. The enormous popularity of a few of his works, such as Carmen and L’Arléssienne, has tended to overshadow the rest of his oeuvre. Though not all of his music is of the same quality and many pieces were left unfinished, much beautiful music awaits discovery by anyone willing to probe beneath the surface of his accomplishments.

Posterity’s judgment of Bizet has fluctuated between extremes of adulation and disdain. Only in the latter half of the twentieth century did a clearer image of his achievements begin to emerge. Though he was receptive to forward-looking trends in the music of his own time, his style was highly original and not easily imitated. As a result, his influence on succeeding generations is difficult to gauge and is not necessarily commensurate with his intrinsic stature as a composer. Nevertheless, he must be counted among the greatest musical geniuses of nineteenth century Europe.

Bibliography

Curtiss, Mina. Bizet and His World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958. A singular biography that sheds much light on Bizet’s personal life. Little emphasis is placed on analysis and critique of Bizet’s music, and the text includes no musical examples. In addition to a selected bibliography and an index, the appendixes include translations of Bizet’s unpublished correspondence, a list of the contents of Bizet’s music library, a catalog of his works, and accounts of their posthumous presentations.

Dean, Winton. Bizet. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1948. A standard biography by the preeminent English-language Bizet scholar. In addition to a carefully researched biographical discussion interspersed with musical examples, the author includes valuable appendixes: a catalog of Bizet’s works, a calendar of Bizet’s life, and a list of individuals associated with Bizet and short biographies of them. Includes an extensive bibliography and an index.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Bizet’s Ivan IV.” In Fanfare for Ernest Newman, edited by Herbert Van Thal. London: A. Barker, 1955. Documents the history of Bizet’s opera Ivan IV, which was never performed in his lifetime. Discusses the probable chronology of its composition and treats the problems involved in its posthumous productions. Presents an act-by-act critical examination of the music and the drama and establishes Bizet’s use of ideas from Ivan IV in his later operas, especially Carmen.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Carmen. London: Folio Society, 1949. For devotees of the opera, an invaluable work that is divided into three parts. Part 1 presents an English translation (by Lady Mary Lloyd) of Mérimée’s Carmen. Part 2 discusses the genesis of the libretto by Halévy and Meilhac. Part 3 treats the music of the opera and emphasizes the relationship of the music to the dramatic action.

Lacombe, Hervé. The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Edward Schneider. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Lacombe, who has written a French-language biography of Bizet, provides an overview of French opera and its place within nineteenth century society. He focuses on Bizet’s opera Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) as an example of the style and aesthetics common to operas of that period. Includes seven appendixes about Les Pêcheurs de Perles, listing Bizet’s sources, the opera’s staging and evolution during rehearsal and performance, and daily box office receipts for an 1830 performance.

Shanet, Howard. “Bizet’s Suppressed Symphony.” The Musical Quarterly 54 (October, 1958): 461-476. Seeks to explain the mystery of Bizet’s Symphony in C, a masterpiece written when Bizet was only seventeen years old but that waited eighty years for its first performance. Why did Bizet never have it performed, and why did his widow forbid its performance or publication? An engaging article that appeals to layperson and scholar alike.