Both of
Bizet’s parents were musical. His father,
Adolphe-Armand Bizet (
1810-86), came from a family of artisans in Rouen.
He had set up in
Paris as a hairdresser and wigmaker, but by the time of his marriage in
1837 he had become a singing teacher.
He was also a modest composer, with a few published works, but he was evidently not
very highly regarded as a musician,
even by his son, who leaned more towards his mother’s guidance. She, born
Aimée Delsarte (
1815-61) in
Cambrai, came to
Paris
to stay with her brother
François Delsarte, a singing teacher of much greater eminence than his brother-in-law
and a champion of the works of
Gluck and of classicism in general at a time when such things were receding from fashion.
Delsarte was a musician of eccentric and unorthodox tastes who exercised an important influence
on his brilliant nephew, and his wife, a professor of solfège at the Conservatoire,
was yet another musician in the family.
Bizet’s mother taught him to read music alongside his other early lessons, and she probably
taught him the piano too.
Bizet was his parents’ only child, and he was called Georges from an early age in preference
to his three baptismal names.
The family lived in the northern part of
Paris, and the proximity of six
Delsarte cousins provided the boy with company.
Bizet’s musical gifts were evident at an early age. He liked to listen outside the door
of the room in which his father was teaching.
At the age of eight his father called him in and was astonished to hear him sing a
song he had heard without looking at the music.
The following year
Bizet’s father decided to enrol him at the
Conservatoire, and there is little doubt that he was admitted on merit alone, even without the
support of Delsarte and his connections.
He enrolled on
9 October 1848, while still nine years old.
For the next nine years the
Conservatoire, not far from his home, was the centre of his life and the focus of his rapid musical
development as pianist and composer.
He was never in danger of becoming too narrowly wedded to music since he was already
an avid reader and a boy of unusual intelligence.
Of
Auber, the
Conservatoire’s elderly director,
Bizet always had a poor opinion, but he was blessed with sympathetic teachers.
He started in
Marmontel’s piano class, and won a premier prix for solfège within six months of his arrival.
Zimmerman,
Marmontel’s predecessor now in retirement, took an interest in the boy and gave him private
lessons in piano and solfège.
Marmontel’s efficacious teaching turned
Bizet into a brilliant pianist, soon to be well known for his exceptional gifts as a sight-reader.
He won a second prix for piano in
1851 and a premier prix the following year.
In
1852
Bizet entered
Benoist’s organ class and a year later he began to take the composition class of
Fromental Halévy, a composer of distinction with an enquiring mind.
Unlike many other Conservatoire teachers,
Halévy had a busy career in other spheres, for his operas were regularly staged at the Opéra
and the
Opéra-Comique,
and in
1854 he became Permanent Secretary of the Institute, a position of immense prestige in
French academic circles.
Bizet was undoubtedly drawn by
Halévy’s interest in a wide range of intellectual pursuits,
and he was soon to be on intimate terms with his family;
Geneviève,
Halévy’s daughter, later became his wife.
In
1854 he won a second prix for both organ and fugue, and in
1855 a premier prix for both.
Equally important for his development, and more crucial to the growth of his musical
style, was the figure of
Gounod, certainly the leading influence on
Bizet in his formative years.
Bizet probably encountered
Gounod through
Zimmerman, whose daughter
Gounod married in
1852.
Gounod is said to have deputised for the ailing
Zimmerman on a number of occasions and thus acted as
Bizet’s teacher.
The works which most impressed
Bizet were Sapho, played at the Opéra in
1851, the choruses for Ponsard’s tragedy Ulysse, played at the Comédie-Française in
1852, and the First Symphony (
1855).
’You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you,’
Bizet told
Gounod in later years.
Each took a close interest in the other’s work for many years, although there were
times when their friendship was less close. A substantial correspondence survives.
Bizet’s impressive record at the
Conservatoire led inexorably to the institution’s highest accolade, the Prix de Rome.
He first entered in
1853, when he was fourteen, but was eliminated after the preliminary round.
He did not compete again until
1856 when he reached the final round.
Although his cantata David was judged to be the best, he was awarded only a second prix; there was therefore little surprise in his winning the Prix in 1857, when two premiers prix, were awarded, to
Bizet and to
Charles Colin.
His cantata Clovis et Clotilde, was performed at the Institute ceremony on
3 October 1857, and he left for
Rome the following December. He was nineteen years old.
Behind this successful academic record
Bizet was rapidly maturing as a composer and pianist. His first surviving works are a handful
of piano pieces from before
1854.
In that year three of his songs appeared in print, two of them in a collection that
included one of his father’s.
Again through the agency of his father in all probability, three piano pieces were
published in Le Magasin des familles, beginning with a Méditation religieuse in
1854 or
1855 and two further piano pieces in
1856.
Bizet’s true gifts as a composer spring into view in
1855 with the composition of his first opera, La Maison du docteur (although little is known about its origin or precise date), an overture in A major,
and his earliest work to have entered the repertoire, his Symphony in C. Not performed
until
1935, this symphony reveals an extraordinarily accomplished talent for a student of eighteen,
in melodic invention, in thematic handling and in orchestration.
Few contest its claim to surpass
Gounod’s First Symphony, on which
Bizet was working as arranger that year and which was clearly his model.
In
1856
Bizet composed his second opera, a setting of Le Docteur Miracle by
Léon Battu and
Ludovic Halévy.
Offenbach had picked these two novice librettists to provide a one-act text for a competition
designed to raise the status of operetta.
Ludovic Halévy was
Fromental’s nephew just embarking on a remarkable career. He was later to supply
Offenbach with many of his successful texts and to win immortality as one of the librettists
of Carmen.
The jury for the competition, which included both
Fromental Halévy and
Gounod, awarded the prize equally to
Bizet and
Charles Lecocq, so that the two winning works were staged on consecutive evenings in
April 1857 at the
Bouffes-Parisiens theatre.
The award of the Prix de Rome a few months later confirmed his striking prospects
of a successful career.
At the same time
Bizet was beginning to earn recognition in the public arena as an arranger of other people’s
music for Parisian publishers.
This was to become a major source of income in later years and also a tremendous drain
on his precious time.
Since he did not arrange the Ulysse choruses in
1852, as often supposed, his first certain assignment was the vocal score of
Gounod’s La Nonne sanglante in
1855, followed by the arrangement for four hands of the
Gounod symphony, published by
Colombier.
He seems to have preferred this labour to giving piano lessons, although it is certain
that he was active as a piano teacher during his
Conservatoire years.
The sojourn in
Rome filled nearly three years, taking him away from Parisian music from
December 1857 until September 1860.
The events that he most regretted missing were the appearance of three new
Gounod works at the
Théâtre-Lyrique, Le Médecin malgré lui in
January 1858, Philémon et Baucis in
February 1860, and especially Faust in
March 1859.
But he had a lively taste for Italian music, especially
Rossini, and was not averse to turning his hand to a fresh style.
Italy offered
Bizet, like most Prix de Rome winners, an opportunity to explore the landscape, drink in
Italian art and architecture, listen to Italian opera, and be lazy or hard-working
at will.
He felt free, perhaps for the first time, to indulge his taste for women and to remain
youthful for a few years more.
Throughout this period he maintained a regular correspondence with his mother, reporting
every fortnight on his doings and providing the most substantial body of letters of
his whole career.
The Parisian
Bizet had never travelled far from the city, so the impression made by the landscapes of
southern
France and northern
Italy was profound.
In addition he set eyes for the first time on the sea. He travelled with a group of
fellow-pensioners, sailing from
Genoa to
Livorno, and stopping in
Pisa,
Siena and
Florence en route.
Their destination was the
Villa Medicis in
Rome, home of the
French Institute under its director
Victor Schnetz, and here
Bizet settled in for a long and very agreeable stay.
He made regular excursions into the mountains and in his second year went further
afield first to
Anzio, then to
Naples and
Pompeii.
In his third year he went north to Perugia, Assisi, Bologna and Venice on his way
home to Paris.
He delighted in the art and architecture that was everywhere to be seen, and enjoyed
the company of country people more than the citizens of
Rome,
especially since the French were politically suspect, thanks to
Napoleon III’s tireless meddling in Italian affairs.
He was a gregarious member of the French community at the
Villa Medicis, much in demand for his fluent piano-playing and his lively, rather blunt character.
He enjoyed social occasions and made many new friends, especially among the painters
and sculptors that shared the premises.
In
April 1858 a new arrival,
Edmond About, boulevardier and travel writer, ruffled a few feathers but became a friend who genuinely
admired his music.
There were few musicians there to interest
Bizet until the arrival in
1860 of
Ernest Guiraud, whom he had known before in
Paris and who was to remain a lifelong friend.
High spirits and his delight in the Italian way of life could not mask a certain anxiety
about his prospects as a composer and the progress of his work.
He was frustrated too by the lack of good music to be heard in
Rome.
He did not grasp the significance of
Verdi’s striking advances in the
1850s, for he disliked Un ballo in maschera (which was first heard in
Rome in
1859) and felt that his music was crude and lacking in true style.
He was much more attached to
Rossini,
Mozart and
Mendelssohn, forgetting for a moment the basis of his own style in
Meyerbeer and
Gounod.
Conforming with the rather easy-going regulations of the Prix de Rome,
Bizet sent one envoi each year and started to make a habit of pondering new projects and
abandoning them after a little thought (and sometimes a few drafts and sketches).
He composed a Te Deum in the spring of
1858 and entered it for the Rodrigues prize, which was open only to Rome prizewinners.
Nevertheless he did not win, ascribing his failure partly (and correctly) to his lack
of experience in church music, and the Te Deum remained unpublished until
1971.
His next work was an opera buffa, Don Procopio, entirely in the Italian style on an Italian libretto by
Carlo Cambiaggio which had already been set by the younger
Fioravanti in
1844.
This was far more congenial to
Bizet than choral music, but he submitted it in some apprehension since it did not match
the Institute’s regulations (he was required to write a Mass).
In fact it was well received and the judges commented on its 'easy and brilliant touch'.
There was no prospect of staging it, however, and it remained unperformed until
1906.
His next step was to attempt a grand opera.
Three subjects took his fancy in turn:
Hugo’s Esmeralda,
Hoffmann’s Le tonnelier de Nuremberg, and
Cervantes’s Don Quichotte, but it is unlikely that he composed much, if anything, for any of these.
Self-doubt kept intervening, so he moved on each time to another project.
An ode-symphony on
Homer, Ulysse et Circé, was considered then abandoned, then an orchestral symphony, on which he worked for
two months.
Finally, in
1859, he worked out a scenario from
Camoens relating
Vasco da Gama’s adventurous discovery of a sea-route to
India.
He persuaded a French poet resident in
Rome,
Louis Delâtre, to write the verses for an 'ode-symphonie’ (the model was
Félicien David’s Le désert) in six movements for soloists, chorus and orchestra.
When Vasco de Gama was ready to be submitted to the
Institute,
Bizet felt that he had never written anything so good, and it was in due course judged
to display "elevation of style, spaciousness of form, fine harmonic effects, and rich
and colourful orchestration".
He planned a symphony on the subject of
Rome which was not to be finished until eight years later. What he had achieved during
his stay in
Rome was not embarrassingly insignificant, yet not truly substantial enough to give him,
or anyone else, much confidence about making his way in
Paris on his return.
He was perfectly resigned to the struggle that lay ahead, but curiously blind to the
realities of the musical profession and frequently assailed by agonies of doubt.
He left
Rome in
July 1860 with
Guiraud, taking a leisurely detour through north Italian cities and reaching
Venice on
5 September.
Here he learned that his mother was seriously ill;
Guiraud returned to
Rome while
Bizet, with the architect
Heim as his travelling companion, headed on in no particular haste to
Paris.
He was now thrust back into the routine that was to be his for the remainder of his
life: the eternal quest for opera engagements, courting directors, patrons and singers,
offering compositions to reluctant publishers, organizing and conducting occasional
concerts, working as a rehearsal pianist and accompanist, and doing transcriptions
and arrangements of other composers’ works for money (the vocal score of Reyer’s La Statue, which he greatly admired, occupied him in the spring of 1861).
Bizet never again travelled outside
France (except to
Baden-Baden and
Belgium), and rarely left
Paris. Without the steady bulletins of his letters home we now have sketchier information
about his daily life, and his correspondence is practical and laconic; his handwriting,
never good, becomes increasingly illegible.
The production of four operas in
Paris in the next fifteen years are landmarks in his brief career, but between those significant
moments it is a tale of struggle with some successes and many reverses.
For two years, while his
Rome scholarship continued, he had no need to worry about money.
His mother’s illness brought different anxieties, and he was not able to set up separate
living quarters as he had hoped.
In his first year back in
Paris the highlights were the performances of Tannhäuser at the Opéra in
March 1861, with
Wagner’s ignominious rejection by a noisy public, and the occasion two months later when
Bizet had the opportunity to meet
Liszt and display his phenomenal powers as a sight-reader, an event recounted by
Pigot with the aura of legend;
Liszt is said to have declared
Bizet to be the equal, as a pianist, of
von Bülow and himself.
In
September 1861 his mother died at the age of 45; relations with his father, who was to outlive him
by eleven years, had never been entirely easy, and they were sharply complicated the
following year by the birth of a son,
Jean, to the family maid,
Marie Reiter.
The boy was given to believe that he was
Adolphe Bizet’s child, yet many years later
Marie, who remained in the service of the
Bizet household, revealed that the true father was
Georges.
Another death that affected Bizet deeply was that of his teacher and mentor
Halévy in
March 1862.
For his
1861 submission to the
Institute
Bizet presented two movements from an incomplete symphony and an overture, La Chasse d’Ossian.
The two symphony movements, a Funeral March and a Scherzo, were played at the Institute
on
12 October, and while the March was thought to resemble the slow movement of
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony too closely, the Scherzo enjoyed some success with three more
performances within sixteen months.
Although the overture has disappeared, the March, still unpublished, was partly absorbed
into Les Pêcheurs de perles, and the Scherzo became part of the Second Symphony, completed in
1868.
In the next few years he was extremely productive, and his career prospered. Soon
after his return from Rome he had asked
Ludovic Halévy for the libretto of a one-act opera to submit as his final envoi, but he never followed
it up, perhaps because a commission for a one-act opera came his way from the
Opéra-Comique.
This was La Guzla de l’émir, to a libretto by
Barbier and
Carré,
Gounod’s usual librettists, which he could not refuse. Such a commission was a frequent
but by no means guaranteed bonus for returning Rome scholars.
The opera was composed in
1862 and submitted as his envoi for that year. It was warmly commended for its elevated
feeling and vivacious style, but Bizet was forced to withdraw it when a superior commission,
for a full-length work, came from the Théâtre-Lyrique, a condition of which was that
the recipient should not have had a work previously staged in Paris.
This was to be Les Pêcheurs de perles, composed rapidly in the summer of
1863. La Guzla de l’émir has disappeared, although it is certain that parts of it were absorbed by Les Pêcheurs de perles and perhaps other works, and a setting by
Theodore Dubois of the same libretto was staged in
1873.
In the concert hall
Bizet had some success with his Scherzo, for it was played by three different organizations
in the winter of
1862-63: the Cercle de l’Union Artistique conducted by
Deloffre, the Concerts Populaires conducted by
Pasdeloup, and the Société des Beaux-Arts conducted by himself.
On
8 February 1863 he conducted Vasco de Gama at a concert of the Société des Beaux-Arts, its only hearing in his lifetime. Despite
all this activity he began to feel the pinch of financial insecurity as his scholarship
came to an end.
He was working as an arranger for
Gounod’s publisher
Choudens, a liaison that was to have far-reaching implications for the fate of his own music
since
Choudens was also to become
Bizet’s principal publisher, starting with Les Pêcheurs de perles in
1863.
This work,
Bizet’s first full-length opera to be staged and today restored to the repertoire, was
commissioned by the Théâtre-Lyrique in
April 1863 for performance that September.
Borrowing freely from earlier works,
Bizet completed the score in time and had the satisfaction of seeing eighteen performances
before the end of November.
This was a respectable number, but
Bizet regarded it as a failure, particularly in view of the hostile reaction from the press,
who condemned the libretto as absurd and the score as noisy and offensive.
Some were shocked by the impudence of
Bizet, at the age of twenty-four, appearing on stage at the end to take a bow.
The best notice came from
Berlioz, writing his last feuilleton in the Journal des débats, which recognized
Bizet as a serious talent with a great future.
Bizet was, reciprocally, thrilled by
Berlioz’s Les Troyens à Carthage, which was put on in the same theatre a few weeks later. He even offered to fight
a duel in its defence.
Carvalho, director of the Théâtre-Lyrique, with characteristically reckless courage regarded
Les Pêcheurs de perles not as a failure but as evidence of promise.
He set
Bizet to work on his next opera, Ivan IV, a libretto which
Gounod had worked on for some years.
This was scheduled for production in the spring of
1864, but unknown delays and difficulties kept it from performance.
This state of affairs continued for nearly two years when
Bizet, in frustration, withdrew the opera from the Théâtre-Lyrique and offered it to the
Opéra.
It was, after all, more suited to that theatre, being closer to the
Meyerbeer style than anything else he ever wrote.
But the Opéra never took it up and it remained unperformed until
1946.
Fragments of it, according to
Bizet’s well-established habit, found their way into later works, notably Jeux d'enfants.
The years
1864-66 were disappointingly bleak after the previous two.
His father had built two adjacent cottages at
Le Vésinet, west of
Paris, for himself and his son, where
Bizet liked to spend the summer months, while he spent the winters in
Paris largely occupied with his work as an accompanist and arranger.
He arranged the
Bach/
Gounod Ave Maria for piano solo, and edited
Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith; he assembled a collection of 150 transcriptions for the publisher
Heugel under the title Le Pianiste chanteur; he arranged six
Gounod choruses for piano solo.
He also published a little music of his own, including the song Vieille chanson and a group of piano pieces, including the virtuoso Chasse fantastique, and the six Chants du Rhin, based on poems by
Méry.
Heugel commissioned a collection of six songs, the Feuilles d’album. He took a few composition students, to one of whom,
Edmond Galabert, we are indebted for some affectionate memories of
Bizet in the years
1865 to 1869 and a volume of correspondence that reveals much about
Bizet’s view of his art.
Another student,
Paul Lacombe, began to work with
Bizet in
March 1867 by correspondence and remained a close friend.
Despite his lack of interest in Ivan IV,
Carvalho still had faith in
Bizet’s talent.
In
June 1866 he signed a contract for a four-act opera to be staged at the Théâtre-Lyrique.
The libretto, based on
Scott’s The Fair Maid of Perth, was by
Jules Adenis, a friend of
Bizet’s, and the eccentric, successful St-Georges.
Bizet’s response was immediate and enthusiastic, and by the end of the year La Jolie Fille de Perth was finished.
He was impatient to see it staged, especially since the
1867 Exposition Universelle promised to bring big summer crowds to
Paris.
In fact it was to be
Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette on which
Carvalho relied for his summer success, so La Jolie Fille de Perth after several postponements did not open until
December.
It was well received, and Bizet was delighted, yet it did not draw the public and
enjoyed only eighteen performances, the same number as Les Pêcheurs de perles in the same theatre four years before.
The precarious state of the theatre’s finances was reflected in the recycled sets
and costumes that did not escape notice.
A production in
Brussels followed in
April 1868, but
Bizet disliked the performance and it made little impact there.
Pierre Berton later recalled that it was disappointment over this opera that marked
Bizet’s brow henceforth with "furrows of anxiety that he never lost".
1867 had brought a crop of new competitions, one from each of the three main
Paris opera houses, one for a hymn and one for a cantata for the Exposition.
Bizet, one of 823 contestants for the hymn and one of 103 for the cantata, won neither,
and the cantata is now lost.
The winning cantata by
Saint-Saëns did not receive a performance either.
At first
Bizet did not intend to enter the Opéra’s competition since he was negotiating for a contract
with that theatre for an unnamed opera on a libretto by
Sauvage and
Leroy.
Instead he encouraged his pupils
Galabert and
Lacombe to set the selected libretto, an appealing story called La Coupe da roi de Thulé by
Blau and
Gallet.
The correspondence with
Galabert discusses the dramatic potential of the libretto in some detail.
Eventually
Bizet was prevailed upon to set the text too, which he did between
October 1868 and the early months of 1869.
But his opera was rejected, like
Massenet’s, in favour of
Eugene Diaz's setting, played in
1873.
The dismemberment of
Bizet’s score, of which only fragments remain, is one of the most galling features of his
posthumous fate.
Since
1866 his creative activity had returned to the level of
1862-63. He now completed his Second Symphony, first conceived in
1860 and later known (incorrectly) as Roma.
It was performed (lacking the scherzo) in
February 1869 by
Pasdeloup at the
Cirque Napoléon, its only hearing in
Bizet’s lifetime.
He contributed the first act of a composite operetta Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre played at the
Théâtre de l’Athénée two weeks before La Jolie Fille de Perth.
He composed three songs for
Choudens to publish, including the masterly Adieux de l’hôtesse arabe, and an unusual piano piece, the Variations chromatiques, which he dedicated to a composer he greatly admired,
Stephen Heller.
A huge amount of time in
1867 was devoted to arranging the whole of
Thomas’s Mignon, the current success at the
Opéra-Comique, first for piano solo and then for piano duet; the following year he performed the
same two laborious tasks for
Thomas’s Hamlet.
It is not known when he first met
Geneviève, the younger daughter of his teacher
Fromental Halévy, although he must have known her as a little girl when he was
Halévy’s student at the
Conservatoire.
When her father died in
1862 she was thirteen. Her sister died two years later, and her mother, who suffered from
recurrent mental disturbance, thereafter entrusted her care to relatives.
She was a beautiful young woman with whom
Bizet was in love by
1867 and they were engaged in
October of that year.
But the family, prosperous Jewish bankers on her mother’s side who were in the strange
position of being both wealthy yet currently hard up, disapproved of her marriage
to an unsuccessful composer and the engagement was broken off.
Had her father been alive,
Bizet’s path to marriage might have been smoothed. In the event they were married in a
civil ceremony (
Bizet had no tolerance for established religion) in
June 1869 and were very happy for a while.
But
Bizet’s lack of serious success, his brusque character and her persistent neurosis touching
on mental disorder, made the last years of
Bizet’s short life less than tranquil.
A son
Jacques was born to them in
1872, destined for a turbulent and tragic career.
Immediately after his marriage
Bizet paid homage to his father-in-law by completing and revising the opera Noé, which
Halévy had left unfinished at his death.
With his usual parsimonious instincts he used up some old music for this purpose,
including sections of Vasco de Gama, but certain parts of it were newly composed.
The extent of
Bizet’s contribution has never been fully established, and the vocal score published when
the opera was finally performed in
Karlsruhe ten years after
Bizet’s death has confused the issue further.
The opera was supposed to have been staged at the
Théâtre-Lyrique under its new director
Pasdeloup, but the usual financial problems and the outbreak of war in
1870 made it impossible.
With Noé done
Bizet started to plan a number of new works, some of which he had been contemplating for
years; none of them were ever completed, some not even started: an opera on the life
of
Vercingetorix, an opera on
Mistral’s Calendal for the
Opéra-Comique, an opera on
Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe, an opera on the Indian epic Ramayana, and a setting of
Sardou’s libretto Grisélidis.
Lack of any firm commitment from opera managements and a chronic indecision about
the direction of his own career would probably have left all these projects in limbo
even without the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in
July 1870.
It was assumed that
Napoleon III, like his uncle, would throw the German armies into retreat, but the realities of
defeat, siege and humiliation quickly cast
France into chaos.
Bizet, who, like
Saint-Saëns,
Massenet and many others, enlisted in the National Guard, greeted the proclamation of the
Third Republic with enthusiasm.
He and
Geneviève endured the hardships of the siege with grim determination. At the armistice on
26 January 1871 they were free to leave the city, so they travelled to
Bordeaux to visit
Mme Halévy.
This caused distress of a quite different but equally severe kind, since the meeting
of mother and daughter triggered hysterical outbursts on both sides.
They hurried back to
Paris with
Geneviève in need of lengthy recuperation. Next came the two months of Commune and civil bloodshed
from which they escaped by going first to
Compiègne and then to
Le Vésinet, within earshot of gunfire in
Paris.
The restoration of peace in June brought with it the prospect of reinvigorating French
music from within.
Thomas took over the direction of the
Conservatoire and
Saint-Saëns put his energies into the new Société Nationale de Musique with the aim of building
a new concert repertory by French composers.
Within the year
Bizet had completed two small masterpieces, leaving all his other projects on the shelf.
The first was a one-act opera, Djamileh, commissioned by the new directors of the
Opéra-Comique to a libretto by
Gallet based on
de Musset’s Namouna.
It was staged in
May 1872 and was poorly sung and poorly received, with only eleven performances, at some of
which it shared the bill with
Saint-Saëns’s La Princesse jaune, his first opera to be staged.
The other work of
1871 was the suite of twelve pieces for piano duet, Jeux d’enfants, with six of them also orchestrated.
The orchestral suite (containing just five pieces) was rehearsed by
Pasdeloup in
1872 but withdrawn by
Bizet, then performed by Colonne a year later.
The four-hands suite was published by
Durand in
1872 and has remained popular among duettists to this day.
Durand also published at this time his transcription for piano solo of Schumann’s op. 56
Etudes for pedal piano.
Despite the obscurity of Djamileh’s passing,
Bizet was soon engaged to write his final two masterpieces, L'Arlésienne and Carmen.
The indefatigable
Carvalho,
Bizet’s patron at the Théâtre-Lyrique, was now director of the Vaudeville theatre, where
he planned to mount a production of
Daudet’s play L'Arlésienne.
As with most incidental music of the period, the orchestra was small and the musical
insertions mostly short.
Bizet relied a good deal on the device of mélodrame, much used in
Opéra-Comique since the 1850s, where music is played under spoken dialogue.
It was particularly well suited to this Provençal drama. The music was composed quickly
in the summer of
1872 and the play opened on
30 September. It was not well received, and both
Daudet and
Bizet were bitterly discouraged.
The musical press took little notice of incidental music for plays and the theatrical
press found
Bizet’s music too complex and demanding, but one or two musicians, whose discernment
Bizet appreciated, among them
Reyer and
Massenet, understood the special qualities of this music in the context for which it was designed.
Bizet quickly arranged four extracts from the music as a suite for full orchestra, and
this was played by
Pasdeloup in November.
Its success was immediate and lasting, and the general familiarity of this music has
generated occasional revivals of the play.
His next task was to work once again for
Gounod, preparing Roméo et Juliette for its revival (in a revised form) at the
Opéra-Comique in
January 1873.
Gounod, who had fled to
England to escape the siege of
Paris, was entangled in
London affairs and unable to be present himself.
Bizet was then able to embark on the opera that
du Locle and
de Leuven, the
Opéra-Comique directors, had proposed with
Meilhac and
Ludovic Halévy as librettists.
Carmen,
Mérimée’s novel from
1845, was Bizet’s own suggestion, but its risqué character and the fact that Carmen meets
a violent death on stage at the end of the opera caused misgivings that split the
two directors and held up the opera’s prospects of being staged.
We have little information about progress on the opera, although it is likely that
much of it was composed if not orchestrated by the summer of
1873 when he began to discuss the choice of singers for the title role.
But then he set the work aside, first to stand in again for the absent
Gounod, assisting with his incidental music for
Barbier’s play Jeanne d’Arc.
Bizet helped with rehearsals, arranged the vocal score and transcribed the complete work
for piano solo. He was also approached to write a new work for the Opera.
This was something that he could scarcely refuse, for the great tenor
Faure was to play the leading role and the subject was to be based on the legendary Spanish
hero El Cid, with a libretto by
Gallet.
Bizet could not have asked for a better proposition and he worked at incredible speed.
Don Rodrigue, as the opera was called, was drafted by October of that year.
Then the misfortune that never seemed to be far from
Bizet’s heels struck again. The Opéra’s celebrated theatre in the Rue Le Peletier, where
the genre of grand opera had held sway during
Meyerbeer’s long reign, burned down on
28 October.
Don Rodrigue had always, in any case, been
Faure’s idea, not that of the director,
Halanzier, who felt no obligation to pursue it now that he had no theatre of his own.
In the winter of
1873-74 he composed a "dramatic overture" Patrie, which was played by
Pasdeloup on
15 February 1874 and well received.
Its main theme came from Act V of Don Rodrigue. He could then turn his whole attention to Carmen.
In
December 1873
Galli-Marié was engaged to sing the title role, which pleased
Bizet since he considered her right for the part and since she had enjoyed enormous success
at the
Opéra-Comique in
Maillart’s Lara in
1864 and even more in the title role of
Thomas’s long-running Mignon since
1866.
Rehearsals were repeatedly postponed, for
de Leuven found the libretto unacceptable, a dilemma which was resolved by his resignation
early in
1874.
Du Locle, now sole director of the
Opéra-Comique, was more sympathetic to the work, though never free of misgivings about the music
or the public’s response to something so at odds with the conventional family entertainment
for which the theatre was thought to exist.
Bizet’s marriage was clearly under strain at this time, and it probably never recovered.
Georges was often moody,
Geneviève in need of constant attention.
They separated for at least two months, although they spent the summer of
1874 together in a villa in
Bougival, not far from
le Vésinet.
There she is said to have enjoyed the attentions of the eccentric pianist
Delaborde, their neighbour, and gossip later linked
Bizet’s name with
Galli-Marié, a liaison which is not impossible in the backstage turmoil which the production
of Carmen was to undergo.
The
Halévy family later destroyed many papers and letters from this period, but who that action
was intended to protect is not clear.
Carmen was orchestrated at
Bougival in the summer of
1874 and rehearsals began in September.
Bizet arranged the piano score himself and played the piano for rehearsals.
There were objections from both the orchestra, who found
Bizet’s forthright style of scoring beyond their reach, and the chorus, who were expected
to act convincingly as individuals rather than respond in unison as a group.
The women objected to having to both smoke and fight on stage. Fortunately
Bizet was firmly supported by
Galli-Marié and by
Lhérie, the Don José, so that few compromises had to be made.
The rehearsal period was prolonged and difficult, and the first performance was not
given until
3 March 1875. The conductor was
Deloffre.
Despite the outraged response of many of the audience and the generally hostile response
of the press, Carmen was not a failure.
It ran for forty-five performances in
1875 and three more the following year, a respectable number.
As many were attracted as were repelled, perhaps, by its scandalous tone, and the
appalling misfortune of
Bizet’s death may have awoken the curiosity of others.
Soon after the opening night
Bizet suffered a recurrence of quinsy, which had often afflicted him before.
He was undoubtedly depressed by the uncomprehending and ignorant tone of many of the
reviews.
This exacerbated the melancholy mood that had often beset him and may well have weakened
his resistance to ailments from which in other circumstance he might have recovered.
He was soon battling rheumatism and pain in his ears as well as the throat. Towards
the end of May he moved with his family to
Bougival, where he rashly went for a swim in the
Seine, and on
30 May he suffered a severe attack of rheumatism followed by two heart attacks.
He died in the early hours of
3 June 1875, a few hours after the thirty-third performance of Carmen.
He was thirty-six years old. The funeral took place two days later at the church of
the
Trinité in
Paris, and he was buried in the
Cimetiere Père-Lachaise.