In 1857 a setting of the one-act operetta Le docteur Miracle won him a share in a prize offered by Jacques Offenbach. He also won the Music Composition scholorship of the Prix de Rome, the conditions of which required him to study in Rome for three years. There, his talent developed as he wrote such works as the opera Don Procopio. Apart from this period in Rome, Bizet lived in the Paris area all his life.
His mother died shortly after his return to Paris. He composed the opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) for the Theatre-Lyrique in 1863 and also around this time wrote the opera La jolie fille de Perth, the popular L'arlésienne originally produced as incidental music for a play, and Jeux d'enfants (Children's games) for the piano.
He also composed a romantic opera, Djamileh, which is often seen as a precursor to Carmen, 1875. This latter opera is Bizet's best-known work and is based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by Prosper Mérimée. Bizet composed the title role for a mezzo-soprano.
Carmen was not initially well-received but praise for it eventually came from well-known contemporaries including Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Their views proved to be prophetic, as Carmen has since become one of the most popular operatic works. However Bizet did not live to see its success, as he died from angina at the age of 36 a few months after writing it, on his wedding anniversary. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Bizet's music has been used in the twentieth century as the basis for several important ballets. The Soviet-era "Carmen Suite" (1967), set to music drawn from Carmen arranged by Rodion Shchedrin, gave the Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya one of her signature roles; it was choreographed by Alberto Alonso. In the West the "l'Arlesienne" of Roland Petit is well-regarded, and the "Symphony in C" by George Balanchine is considered to be one of the great ballets of the twentieth century. It was first presented as "Le Palais de Crystal" by the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947, and has been in the repertory there ever since. The ballet has no story; it simply fits the music: each movement of the symphony has its own ballerina, cavalier, and corps de ballet, all of whom dance together in the finale.Bizet died in 1875 and is interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. |
