49

L’Ange et Tobie

cantate

fragment

[A Introduction]

BRécit (Tobie) 'Azarias, ne reviendras-tu pas ?'

39 bars extant

C Romance (Tobie) 'Là-bas dans la fertile plaine'

33 bars extant

[2 Duo 'O ciel ! inanime !']

[3 Trio 'Ô bonheur, transports ineffables !']

[4 Final]

[L’ange Raphaël, sous le nom d’Azarias - soprano]
Tobie - ténor
[Le vieux Tobie - basse]

2 flûtes, 2 hautbois, 2 clarinettes, 2 bassons, 4 cors, 2 trompettes (ou cornets à pistons), 3 trombones, timbales, cordes

Text: Léon Halévy (1802–83), writer, historian and dramatist, younger brother of Bizet’s teacher Fromental Halévy and father of Bizet’s librettist Ludovic Halévy. The text, set for the 1847 Prix de Rome, is based on the story from the Apocrypha about Tobias, his father Tobit and the angel Raphael. The scene is 'dans le désert, près de Ninive'.

The autograph of the winning cantata by Louis-Pierre Deffès (also a pupil of Halévy), dated 19-7-1847, is at F-Pn MS 7051.

Composition: 1853–57. These fragments, like those of Le Chevalier enchanté, Loyse de Montfort, Herminie and Le Retour de Virginie, were composed as preparatory exercises while Bizet was Halévy’s composition student at the Conservatoire. If Bizet set the whole cantata, only these fragments from nos 1B and 1C, both for Tobie (tenor), have survived.

Autograph full score: F-Pn MS 430, gift of Reynaldo Hahn. 20-stave paper, 310 x 232 mm., 9 f. (+ 2 f. collettes) incorrectly numbered, 18 p. of music. Headed fragment de 'l’ange et Tobie' cantate in another hand. The orchestration is mostly filled in, but not completely. Leaves 1r, 6r and 7v are covered by collettes; on the verso of the last collette is part of a Méditation, six bars of introduction in A flat major for voice and piano, probably nothing to do with this work.

	Récit.	f. 1r–5v
	Romance	f. 6r–9v (the music breaks off)

Printed text: Institut Royal de France, Académie des beaux-arts, Séance du 2 octobre 1847, p. 11–24. F-Pn ThB.4532(1847), F-Pn 4o B 816(14)

Bibliography:

Wright 159
Lacombe 119-20

Jean Chantavoine, ‘Quelques Inédits de Georges Bizet’, Le Ménestrel, 11-8-1933, p. 325.
Lesley Wright, 'Bizet et le prix de Rome : de l'initiation à l'accomplissement', Le Concours du prix de Rome de musique (1803-1968) (Lyon, 2011), p. 529-48.