61 Facts About Georges Bizet

1.

Georges Bizet was a French composer of the Romantic era.

FactSnippet No. 992,188
2.

Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Georges Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire.

FactSnippet No. 992,189
3.

Georges Bizet was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public.

FactSnippet No. 992,190
4.

Georges Bizet founded no school and had no obvious disciples or successors.

FactSnippet No. 992,191
5.

Georges Bizet was born in Paris on 25 October 1838.

FactSnippet No. 992,192
6.

Georges Bizet was registered as Alexandre Cesar Leopold, but baptised as "Georges" on 16 March 1840, and was known by this name for the rest of his life.

FactSnippet No. 992,193
7.

Georges Bizet composed a few works, including at least one published song.

FactSnippet No. 992,194
8.

Georges Bizet was interviewed by Joseph Meifred, the horn virtuoso who was a member of the Conservatoire's Committee of Studies.

FactSnippet No. 992,195
9.

Georges Bizet was admitted to the Conservatoire on 9 October 1848, two weeks before his 10th birthday.

FactSnippet No. 992,196
10.

Georges Bizet made an early impression; within six months he had won first prize in solfege, a feat that impressed Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman, the Conservatoire's former professor of piano.

FactSnippet No. 992,197
11.

Georges Bizet met another of Gounod's young students, the 13-year-old Camille Saint-Saens, who remained a firm friend of Bizet's.

FactSnippet No. 992,198
12.

Under the tuition of Antoine Francois Marmontel, the Conservatoire's professor of piano, Georges Bizet's pianism developed rapidly; he won the Conservatoire's second prize for piano in 1851, and first prize the following year.

FactSnippet No. 992,199
13.

Georges Bizet's first preserved compositions, two wordless songs for soprano, date from around 1850.

FactSnippet No. 992,200
14.

Georges Bizet never published the symphony, which came to light again only in 1933, and was finally performed in 1935.

FactSnippet No. 992,201
15.

Georges Bizet's entry was not successful, but nor were any of the others; the musician's prize was not awarded that year.

FactSnippet No. 992,202
16.

Georges Bizet was a great admirer of Rossini's music, and wrote not long after their first meeting that "Rossini is the greatest of them all, because like Mozart, he has all the virtues".

FactSnippet No. 992,203
17.

Georges Bizet was awarded the prize after a ballot of the members of the Academie des Beaux-Arts overturned the judges' initial decision, which was in favour of the oboist Charles Colin.

FactSnippet No. 992,204
18.

Under the terms of the award, Georges Bizet received a financial grant for five years, the first two to be spent in Rome, the third in Germany and the final two in Paris.

FactSnippet No. 992,205
19.

On 27 January 1858, Georges Bizet arrived at the Villa Medici, a 16th-century palace that since 1803 had housed the French Academie in Rome and which he described in a letter home as "paradise".

FactSnippet No. 992,206
20.

Georges Bizet relished the convivial atmosphere, and quickly involved himself in the distractions of its social life; in his first six months in Rome, his only composition was a Te Deum written for the Rodrigues Prize, a competition for a new religious work open to Prix de Rome winners.

FactSnippet No. 992,207
21.

Georges Bizet was discouraged to the extent that he vowed to write no more religious music.

FactSnippet No. 992,208
22.

Georges Bizet was apprehensive about how this breach of the rules would be received at the Academie, but their response to Don Procopio was initially positive, with praise for the composer's "easy and brilliant touch" and "youthful and bold style".

FactSnippet No. 992,209
23.

On his return to Rome, Georges Bizet successfully requested permission to extend his stay in Italy into a third year, rather than going to Germany, so that he could complete "an important work" .

FactSnippet No. 992,210
24.

In September 1860, while visiting Venice with his friend and fellow-laureate Ernest Guiraud, Georges Bizet received news that his mother was gravely ill in Paris, and made his way home.

FactSnippet No. 992,211
25.

Back in Paris with two years of his grant remaining, Georges Bizet was temporarily secure financially and could ignore for the moment the difficulties that other young composers faced in the city.

FactSnippet No. 992,212
26.

On 13 March 1861, Georges Bizet attended the Paris premiere of Wagner's opera Tannhauser, a performance greeted by audience riots that were stage-managed by the influential Jockey-Club de Paris.

FactSnippet No. 992,213
27.

Georges Bizet now declared Wagner "above and beyond all living composers".

FactSnippet No. 992,214
28.

In May 1861 Georges Bizet gave a rare demonstration of his virtuoso skills when, at a dinner party at which Liszt was present, he astonished everyone by playing on sight, flawlessly, one of the maestro's most difficult pieces.

FactSnippet No. 992,215
29.

Georges Bizet's fourth and final envoi, which occupied him for much of 1862, was a one-act opera, La guzla de l'emir.

FactSnippet No. 992,216
30.

In 1862, Georges Bizet had fathered a child with the family's housekeeper, Marie Reiter.

FactSnippet No. 992,217
31.

When his Prix de Rome grant expired, Georges Bizet found he could not make a living from writing music.

FactSnippet No. 992,218
32.

Georges Bizet accepted piano pupils and some composition students, two of whom, Edmond Galabert and Paul Lacombe, became his close friends.

FactSnippet No. 992,219
33.

Georges Bizet worked as an accompanist at rehearsals and auditions for various staged works, including Berlioz's oratorio L'enfance du Christ and Gounod's opera Mireille.

FactSnippet No. 992,220
34.

Georges Bizet made piano transcriptions for hundreds of operas and other pieces and prepared vocal scores and orchestral arrangements for all kinds of music.

FactSnippet No. 992,221
35.

Georges Bizet was, briefly, a music critic for La Revue Nationale et Etrangere, under the assumed name of "Gaston de Betzi".

FactSnippet No. 992,222
36.

Since 1862, Georges Bizet had been working intermittently on Ivan IV, an opera based on the life of Ivan the Terrible.

FactSnippet No. 992,223
37.

Carvalho failed to deliver on his promise to produce it, so in December 1865, Georges Bizet offered it to the Opera, which rejected it; the work remained unperformed until 1946.

FactSnippet No. 992,224
38.

In July 1866, Bizet signed another contract with Carvalho, for La jolie fille de Perth, the libretto for which, by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges after Sir Walter Scott, is described by Bizet's biographer Winton Dean as "the worst Bizet was ever called upon to set".

FactSnippet No. 992,225
39.

Georges Bizet found time to finish his long-gestating Roma symphony and wrote numerous keyboard works and songs.

FactSnippet No. 992,226
40.

Georges Bizet's marriage was initially happy, but was affected by Genevieve's nervous instability, her difficult relations with her mother and by Mme.

FactSnippet No. 992,227
41.

Georges Bizet was critical of the antiquated equipment with which he was supposed to fight; his unit's guns, he said, were more dangerous to themselves than to the enemy.

FactSnippet No. 992,228
42.

Georges Bizet greeted with enthusiasm the proclamation in Paris of the Third Republic.

FactSnippet No. 992,229
43.

Georges Bizet decided that he was no longer safe in the city, and he and Genevieve escaped to Compiegne.

FactSnippet No. 992,230
44.

Georges Bizet resumed work on Clarissa Harlowe and Griselidis, but plans for the latter to be staged at the Opera-Comique fell through, and neither work was finished; only fragments of their music survive.

FactSnippet No. 992,231
45.

Georges Bizet's other completed works in 1871 were the piano duet entitled Jeux d'enfants, and a one-act opera, Djamileh, which opened at the Opera-Comique in May 1872.

FactSnippet No. 992,232
46.

Georges Bizet began the music in the summer of 1873, but the Opera-Comique's management was concerned about the suitability of this risque story for a theatre that generally provided wholesome entertainment, and work was suspended.

FactSnippet No. 992,233
47.

Georges Bizet then began composing Don Rodrigue, an adaptation of the El Cid story by Louis Gallet and Edouard Blau.

FactSnippet No. 992,234
48.

Georges Bizet played a piano version to a select audience that included the Opera's principal baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, hoping that the singer's approval might influence the directors of the Opera to stage the work.

FactSnippet No. 992,235
49.

Georges Bizet finished the score during the summer and was pleased with the outcome: "I have written a work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody".

FactSnippet No. 992,236
50.

Georges Bizet had to counter further attempts at the Opera-Comique to modify parts of the action which they deemed improper.

FactSnippet No. 992,237
51.

The public's reaction was lukewarm, and Georges Bizet soon became convinced of its failure: "I foresee a definite and hopeless flop".

FactSnippet No. 992,238
52.

Adolphe Georges Bizet led the mourners, who included Gounod, Thomas, Ludovic Halevy, Leon Halevy and Massenet.

FactSnippet No. 992,239
53.

Georges Bizet said that Bizet had been struck down just as he was becoming recognised as a true artist.

FactSnippet No. 992,240
54.

Georges Bizet's first orchestral piece was an overture written in 1855 in the manner of Rossini's Guillaume Tell.

FactSnippet No. 992,241
55.

The exception is the above-described Jeux d'enfants duet suite; here Georges Bizet avoids the virtuoso passages that so dominate his solo music.

FactSnippet No. 992,242
56.

Georges Bizet wrote most of his operas in the traditions of Italian and French opera established by such as Donizetti, Rossini, Berlioz, Gounod, and Thomas.

FactSnippet No. 992,243
57.

In Don Procopio, Georges Bizet followed the stock devices of Italian opera as typified by Donizetti in Don Pasquale, a work which it closely resembles.

FactSnippet No. 992,244
58.

Music critic Harold C Schonberg surmises that, had Bizet lived, he might have revolutionised French opera; as it is, verismo was taken up mainly by Italians, notably Puccini who, according to Dean, developed the idea "till it became threadbare".

FactSnippet No. 992,245
59.

Georges Bizet founded no specific school, though Dean names Chabrier and Ravel as composers influenced by him.

FactSnippet No. 992,246
60.

Georges Bizet's showed little interest in her first husband's musical legacy, made no effort to catalogue Bizet's manuscripts and gave many away as souvenirs.

FactSnippet No. 992,247
61.

Georges Bizet's died in 1926; in her will, she established a fund for a Georges Bizet prize, to be awarded annually to a composer under 40 who had "produced a remarkable work within the previous five years".

FactSnippet No. 992,248