![]() Audiences and critics alike considered Carmen scandalous and immoral (although that didn’t stop it from enjoying the longest run of any of Bizet’s previous works). His first three operas, including Les pêcheurs de perles received only lukewarm receptions and Bizet himself destroyed many incomplete operas and large-scale orchestral works.Ĭarmen, based on a contemporary novella by Prosper Merimée, is the story of a fickle seductress who ensnares Don José, an innocent young soldier, into a passion that leads inexorably to desertion, degradation and finally a jealous murder on stage. He had all the right connections in the Paris music establishment but difficulty pleasing audiences and himself. In fact, the Prix de Rome was almost an obligatory first step on the career ladder for would-be French composers (although it certainly didn’t guarantee lasting fame).Īfter his return to Paris, Bizet hoped to specialize in opera. He excelled to the point of winning the coveted Prix de Rome, a composition prize that allowed the winners to study in Rome for three years. Encouraged by his father, he entered the Paris Conservatory at the extremely young age of ten. ![]() In Addition, only a few other works – the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), a youthful symphony and a couple of suites from his incidental music to the now forgotten play L’arlesienne – are still occasionally heard today.Īlthough he did not come from a family of professional musicians, Bizet’s parents recognized his talent and supported his ambition to become a musician and composer. The difference, however, between Bizet and Mozart, who died at about the same age, is that Mozart left over 600 completed compositions, many of them masterpieces, while Bizet is known primarily for a single work, the operas Carmen. Georges Bizet was yet another of those composers who showed precocious brilliance as a child but never lived long enough to fulfill the promise.
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