GEORGES BIZET  1838 - 1875  (Va, Vb)

xxxxxThe French composer Georges Bizet produced his opera Carmen at the Opéra Comique, Paris, in March 1875. A Spanish tale of fire and passion, and with a wealth of powerful melodies, it has become one of the best loved and most frequently performed operas in the world. Sadly, he was taken ill just three months after the first performance and died without having any idea as to the success his masterpiece was to achieve. His other works included the operas The Pearl Fishers and the Fair Maid of Perth, together with orchestral and choral music, piano pieces, and over thirty-five songs.

 

xxxxxBizet was born in Paris. His father was a singing instructor, and his mother an accomplished pianist. His father gave him his first music lessons, and from an early age he showed a remarkable talent. He entered the Paris Conservatory at the age of nine where his teachers included the French composers Charles Gounod and Jacques Halévy (whose daughter, Geneviève, he later married). Apart from a number of awards for his course work, in 1857 he shared a prize sponsored by the French composer Jacques Offenbach, and then won the coveted Prix de Rome with his cantata Clovis et Clotilde. He spent three years in Rome and it was during that time that he became afflicted with a severe throat infection - probably quinsy - and this affected his work. However, he completed three compositions - including a comic opera called Don Procopio - and gathered material with which he compiled his second Symphony in C Major, performed under the title Roma in 1869.

xxxxxOn his return to Paris in July 1860 - where he spent the remainder of his life - he decided to put his mind to composing operas. “I must have a stage,” he once said, “without it I am nothing”. In order to make a living he was first obliged to take on some “hack” work, such as making piano versions of set pieces or producing light orchestral work. However, in 1862, after writing and then scrapping a one-act opera entitled La Guzia de l’Emir, it seemed that his opportunity had come when he was commissioned by the Théatre Lyrique to compose The Pearl Fishers, his first full-length opera. But despite its attractive setting on the exotic island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), it only ran for eighteen performances. Nor did his next work, The Fair Maid of Perth, produced in 1867 and loosely based on the novel by the English writer Sir Walter Scott, fare much better. Neither opera had the subject matter or the libretto to do justice to his dramatic powers as a composer.

xxxxxThe Franco-Prussian War that broke out in 1870 troubled him deeply, and during the siege of Paris that followed he served in the national Guard. It was after this conflict that he produced Jeux d’enfants, twelve children’s games for piano duet, and his incidental music for Alphonse Daudet’s drama L’Arlésienne (The Lady from Arles), two delightful works which only met with limited success. And the year 1872 saw the failure of Djamileh, yet another opera. Based on Alfred de Musset’s oriental story Namouna, it ran for only four performances. Nor was his concert overture called Patrie (Native Land), produced in 1874, any more successful.

xxxxxFinally in March 1875 came what proved to be his masterpiece, the opera Carmen, based on the short novel of that name by the French writer Prosper Mérimée. At first the splendour and savage realism of this work, rich in colour, melody and passion, and brought to life by brilliant orchestration, failed to impress its audiences and its critics. Considered “immoral” and “superficial” it received just 37 performances. It was only after his death in June 1875 that Carmen gradually gained in favour. Much admired by his contemporaries Debussy and Tchaikovsky, it was destined to become one of the most popular operas in musical history. But Bizet, struck down by a heart attack at the age of 37, died a disappointed man. All his life he had striven to gain recognition as a composer of opera, and when it came it came too late.

xxxxxIncidentally, Bizet’s first Symphony in C Major was composed in 1855 when he was 17, but it was never heard in his lifetime. Probably written as a course assignment, it was discovered in 1933 in the archives of the Conservatory Library, and was given its first public performance two years later. A delightful work, it has come to be regarded as a junior masterpiece. ……

xxxxx…… Likewise, his opera Ivan IV, composed in 1865 and rejected, so it seems, by the Théatre Lyrique, never came to light until discovered in 1944. Much amended and renamed Ivan le Terrible, it was first performed in 1946. ……

xxxxx…… Bizetxwas buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the largest burial ground in the city. Named after Père François de la Chaise (1624-1709), the Jesuit Confessor to Louis XIV, it is situated on land bought by the city in 1804. Amongst famous Frenchman buried here are the novelist Honoré de Balzac, the artists Jacques Louis David, Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault, and Napoleon’s famous general Marshal Ney. Among the foreigners laid to rest here are the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin and the British Admiral William Sidney Smith.

Acknowledgements

Bizet: by the French photographer Étienne Carjat (1828-1906), 1875. Daudet: by the French photographer Ferdinand Mulnier (1826-1886) – Archives Larousse, Paris. Julia: by the French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), 1876 – Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

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xxxxxAs we have seen, it was in 1872 that Georges Bizet composed the incidental music for L’Arlésienne (The Lady from Arles), a tragic love story by the French dramatist, novelist and story-teller Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897). Produced in three acts, this play is set in his native Provence, a region in south-east France which featured in many of his works and provided the sunny, lazy background for his best known collection of short-stories, Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from my Mill), published in 1869.

xxxxxDaudet was born into a bourgeois family in the city of Nimes. It would seem that his schooldays, spent in Lyons, were far from happy, and that his first job, an assistant teaching post in Alès, ended in failure. At the end of 1857 he settled in Paris, supported by his older brother Ernest, and it was here that he took up journalism and came to be known in literary circles. In 1858 his first work, a small volume of verse entitled Les Amoureuses (The Lovers), was fairly well received, and this was followed by his first attempts at stage production, but it was not until 1869 with the publication of his Letters from my Mill, that recognition came on a wider scale. Comprised of fourteen charming short stories, written in the first person, and supposedly produced while living in a windmill in Fontvieille, Provence, they described colourful characters and whimsical events far removed from the hustle and bustle of life in the capital. As a result they entranced Parisiens and delighted southerners. Notable among these gentle, humorous tales were The Three Low Masses, the Elixir of Father Gaucher, and the Secret of Master Conrille.

xxxxxA year earlier, 1868, had seen the publication of his semi-autobiographical novel Le Petit Chose in which - very much in the mould of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - he described his unhappy life at boarding school. He always denied imitating the famous English writer, but Dickensian-like characters appear in a number of his works, and he came to be known by some as the “French Dickens”. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 put a temporary halt to his literary activities, but it was to provide a vital source of material for future works. He joined the National Guard and took part in the defence of the city, but he refused to fight against the Commune, and left Paris in April 1872. His return saw the publication of his second volume of short stores, Les Contes du lundi (Monday Tales). These stories, plus Robert Helmont of 1874, provided a realistic account of the horrors of the Franco-Prussian War and, as far as he was concerned, the futility and absurdity of such conflicts.

xxxxxThe war over, in 1872 Daudet produced the character Tartarin, featured in three short stories which rank among the most delightful works of humour in the French language - The Prodigious Adventures of Tartaran de Tarascon, Tartarin in the Alps, and Port Tarascon. His hero, a lively Provencal bighead, embarks upon a series of astonishing adventures - not unlike those attempted by Cervantes’ Don Quixote - first as a big-game hunter (when he shoots a donkey and a circus lion), then as an intrepid mountaineer, and finally as an explorer in the South Seas. His friend Gustave Flaubert considered this to be Daudet’s masterpiece.

xxxxxIn 1874 Daudet produced Fromont jeune et Risler ainé (Fromont the Younger and Risler the Elder). A realistic story, noted for its admirable characterisation, it was well received, and launched him on a series of successful novels about troubled relationships in modern French life. Often writing for eighteen hours a day, he produced a dozen or more works over the next fifteen years. These included Jack, about an illegitimate boy; Le Nabab, based on the Duc de Morny (for whom he worked in the 1860s), L’Évangéliste, concerned with religious fanaticism, and Sapho, about a turbulent love affair with a former mistress.  

xxxxxHis memoirs are contained in two volumes entitled Souvenirs d'un homme de lettres (Reminiscences of a Man of Letters) and Trente ans de Paris (Thirty Years in Paris), completed in 1888. L’Immortel, published the same year, contains a bitter attack on the French Academy - he was not a member! -, and well worth a mention are his charming children’s stories, one of the most popular being La Belle Nivernaise, a tale about an old boat and her crew.

xxxxxDaudet had many friends. Among these were Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola and Edmond de Goncourt, “naturalists” like him, who took their material from the events they lived through and the people they knew. He was capable of a charming style full of light and colour - like his native Provence -, but his later novels also revealed his keen powers of observation and his deep understanding of human behaviour, viewed always with compassion, but tinged at times with a touch of irony and humour.

xxxxxIn his final years Daudet suffered from severe spinal pain - the result of syphilis - but he continued to write, took part in social functions, and in 1895 paid brief visits to London and Venice. He died suddenly in Paris in December 1897, aged 57, and was buried, like Bizet, in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

xxxxxIncidentally, because the title character never appears in the play, “L’Arlésienne” is often used in France to describe a person who is always absent from the place you would expect to find him or her. ……

xxxxx…… Daudet married Julia Allard in 1867 and the marriage was a happy one. They had two sons and a daughter. Madame Alphonse Daudet also possessed literary talent, and is best known for two works, Impressions de nature et d'art of 1879, and L'Enfance d'une Parisienne, published in 1883. This portrait of her is by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.