BORN TO VICTORY GEORGES BIZET

He entered the history of music thanks to one very popular work. Knowledgeable people say that such cases are rare. Fate gave such a chance Georges Bizet who wrote the world-famous opera, but the same fate took a lot in return.

Bizet was born in Paris in 1838. He was named after the sonorous names of three commanders: Alexander - Caesar - Leopold, but in the family he was Georges. With this name Bizet went down in history, and the name given at birth always reminded of itself ...

child without childhood

Georges I liked to study music with my father, a singing teacher, and with my mother, a professional pianist. At the same time, he, like any boy, wanted to run around the streets and play with other children. The parents thought differently. At the age of four, the boy already knew the notes and knew how to play the piano, and two weeks before the decade he entered the Paris Conservatory. Childhood ended before it began. At thirteen Georges started composing music.

In the morning, my mother invariably brought her son to the conservatory, and after classes she took her home. Then everything was according to the script - he was fed, and then closed in a room where Georges played the piano until he fell asleep from exhaustion. The young musician tried to resist his mother and at the same time understood that her stubbornness and his talent brings results. However, he preferred literature. “You grew up in a musical family,” his mother said when she caught him reading, “and you will be a musician, not a writer. Outstanding!”

To study Georges it was easy, he grasped everything on the fly. At nineteen Bizet graduated from the conservatory and became the youngest laureate to receive the Grand Prix de Rome for the cantata Clovis and Clotilde. The eternal city where Georges studied, became for him a source of inspiration, creative search and love.

Georges Bizet's first love

Plump and short-sighted, with curls curled so tightly that it was difficult to comb them, Bizet did not consider himself attractive to women. He always spoke quickly, a little confusedly, and was sure that women did not like this manner of speaking at all. He also sweats all the time hands, which he was also terribly embarrassed of and blushed all the time.

With the funny and flirtatious Giuseppe Georges met in Italy and, of course, began to call her to Paris. The young man was intoxicated with happiness and kept repeating: “I am not rich, but making money is so easy. Two successful comic operas and we'll live like kings."

The letter about his mother's illness took him by surprise. He left with Giuseppa's promise to come as soon as his mother was better. Father grieved in one room Georges in another. Money was needed to fight disease and poverty. If Georges now he was able to write a brilliant work that would bring him a lot of money, but it takes time, but there is none.

"Temporary" work of Georges Bizet

I met with the owner of one of the most famous Parisian publishing houses, Antoine Choudan. He looked at the young man with surprise and could not believe that he was sitting in front of him. laureate of the prestigious Rome Prize, a young genius. It was risky to bet on a novice composer, but the publisher understood well that the young man needed money and was ready to work, so he offered to arrange operas for the piano by famous composers.

All day long Bizet pored over other people's scores. He regularly received money, but they were not enough all the time. “Write a symphony,” mother repeated as if delirious, “as soon as you do it, glory will find you.” But he didn't have time for the symphony. Drafts multiplied, and, despite his hard work, debts grew every day. Mother died a year after his arrival ...

The musical theater attracted the composer. He tried to go to all the premieres, but everything he wrote was not approved. The comic opera Don Procopio was not rated. A number of orchestral pieces, which will later be included in the cycle "Memories of Rome", too. Friends advised to pursue a career as a pianist, but Georges wanted to compose music and was sure that the chosen path would lead him to success. All that was left was to work, wait and endure the need.

In 1863, the premiere of the opera "Pearl Divers" took place. Critics noted the naturalness and beauty of the vocal parts, many expressive moments in the score - and that's all. The opera was staged 18 times and was withdrawn from the repertoire. Everything returned: sleepless nights, other people's scores, music lessons. Dousing with cold water, walking around the city and visiting theaters saved me from nervous exhaustion.

Love is a mockery

Once, on a train, he met Mogador, the opera diva Madame Lionel, the writer Celeste Venard, the Countess de Chabriyan. She spent her youth in dens, then became a dancer, and then became interested in literature and began to describe what she knew about life in novels. Her books were not stale on the shelves. They tried not to talk about them in decent houses, but every Parisian knew about the existence of this woman. During a meeting with Bizet the charming Mogador was a widow and the owner of a musical theater, where she sang the main parts.

Countess de Chabriand

For the first time in a long time, the heart Bizet beat rapidly. He is twenty-eight, she is forty-two. All his hardships and sorrows drowned in the unfeigned passion of this woman. Happiness was short-lived. Mogador mood swings plunged Georges in despair. In a fit of anger, all the bad habits of the Mogadors woke up. Bizet with his delicate taste and vulnerable soul suffered. Mogador is getting old. She was haunted by financial troubles, he could not help her in any way. His income still barely paid the bills, and his love was useless to her. But to break up with this woman Bizet was unable to. During the next scandal, the beloved doused Georges from head to toe with a tub of cold water. Bizet I went out into the street, where the snow swirled quietly.

"Quiet" happiness of Georges Bizet

Purulent tonsillitis - that was the diagnosis of doctors. For a man who had suffered from colds and sore throats all his life, he took a big risk, returning to that ill-fated day on foot. Bizet worked lying down, could hardly speak. But his physical suffering was no match for his mental suffering.

Jules Ellie Delaunay

The opera "Beauty of Perth" was not a success. There was no money again. Bizet I almost didn't believe in myself. He started work and put it off. The disease did not end, poverty did not pass. In the spring of 1869, still weak after his illness, he went for a walk. He passed by the house of his teacher and he was seized with a desire to go where he felt good and calm. Here he met with the grown-up daughter of the teacher.

Their romance was not swift. Finally, Georges made an offer. It seemed as if the sun had peeped into his long-suffering life. Genevieve took care of household chores and cut spending by surrounding Bizet such tenderness and care that he could work again.

The family idyll was short-lived. Soon the wife was tired of her husband's constant absences and his eternal employment. The class was canceled that day, a student fell ill, and Bizet came home ahead of schedule. His only desire was to sit down and start writing, because he had an order - the comic opera "Jamile". There were voices in the dining room. His wife laughed, a male baritone echoed her ...

"Carmen"

The prototype of the main character should be Mogador with her passion. The music that came out from under the pen did not give Bizet sleep. And finally, the premiere. The hall of the Paris Opera is full. Bizet, standing behind the scenes, went cold with fear. "Carmen" could not be another failure ...

Galli-Marie, the first performer of the role of Carmen

The first act is over. Cold reception, liquid pops. The performance was very mediocre. Nobody appreciated the music. Genevieve could not stand it and left the hall. Bizet was crushed. He threw himself into the cold water of the Seine and collapsed with a fever the next morning. Deafness came, hands and feet went numb. Then there was a heart attack. The composer then regained consciousness, then delirious. He died at the age of 37 in 1875, less than four months before the enchanting success of Carmen at the Vienna Opera.

A year after the unsuccessful first production, the opera will be staged with triumph on almost all major stage venues in Europe. In 1878, he writes: "I am convinced that in ten years, Carmen will become the most popular opera in the world."

And so it happened. The same fate awaited not only this opera of the composer. Most of the works Georges Bizet entered the Golden Fund of world classical music.

DATA

Already at the age of nine, he demonstrated extraordinary musical abilities, and therefore was enrolled in the Paris Conservatory, despite such a young age. After graduating from the conservatory, he became a professional composer, although he was only 19. One poorly successful composer spoke with a grin about Bizet: "He who blooms early will bloom early." When these words were delivered Bizet, he was not taken aback and replied: “Apparently, he himself is going to not bloom until he is seventy.”

Bizet well understood the ephemeral nature of fame, and therefore did not value it much. “Fame comes and goes, but the unknown remains ...”, the composer often used to say.

During his short, but rather eventful life in the theater, he faced different situations and suffered a lot from his colleagues. It is believed that the phrase belongs to him: “In music, everything is like in life: good musicians do not remember evil. The bad are good."

Updated: March 10, 2016 by: Elena

Bizet Georges

Biography of Georges Bizet - young years.
Georges Bizet was born in Paris on October 25, 1838. His full name is Alexandre-Cesar-Leopold Bizet, but his relatives called him Georges. Georges Bizet was brought up in an atmosphere of love for music: his father and maternal uncle were singing teachers, and his mother played the piano. She became his first music teacher. Bizet's talent manifested itself at a very early age: from the age of four he knew the notes.
At the age of ten, Bizet entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied for nine years. Bizet's teachers were the most famous musical figures of France: A. Marmontel, P. Zimmerman, composers F. Halevi and C. Gounod. Although Bizet himself later admitted that he was much more attracted to literature, his musical studies were very successful: already during his studies, he wrote many musical compositions. Among them, the symphony, created by him at the age of seventeen, which is successfully performed to this day, became the best work.
In the last year of his studies, Bizet composed a cantata on an ancient legendary plot, with which he took part in a competition for writing a one-act operetta, and which received an award. Bizet also received prizes at competitions in piano and organ playing, and his biggest award during his studies was the big Rome Prize for the cantata Clovis and Clotilde, which gave him the opportunity to receive state scholarships and four years of residence in Italy.
After graduating from the conservatory, Bizet lived in Italy from 1857 to 1860. There he traveled a lot and was engaged in his education, got acquainted with the local way of life. At that time, the young composer was at a crossroads: he had not yet found his theme in musical creativity. However, he decided on the form of presentation of his future works - for this he chose theatrical music. He was interested in Parisian opera premieres and musical theatre, partly for materialistic reasons, as it was easier to succeed in this field in those days.
During his stay in Italy, Bizet wrote the Vasco da Gama symphony-cantata and several orchestral pieces, some of which were later included in the symphonic suite Memories of Rome. Three years spent in Italy was a rather carefree time in the biography of Georges Bizet.
On his return to Paris, hard times began for Bizet. It was not so easy to achieve recognition, and Bizet earned money with private lessons, wrote music to order in a light genre and worked with other people's compositions. Shortly after Bizet's arrival in Paris, his mother died. Constant overstrain, sharp declines in creative forces, accompanying the composer throughout his life, became the reason for the short life of the brilliant composer.
But Bizet did not look for easy ways to recognition. Although he could become an excellent pianist and more quickly succeed in this field, he devoted himself completely to composing. “I don’t want to do anything for external success, brilliance, I want to have an idea before starting any thing ...” - this is how Bizet himself wrote about his choice. The diversity of his creative ideas can be judged from the unfinished works found that Bizet did not manage to complete in his short life, such as the opera Ivan the Terrible, found only in the 30s of our century.
In 1863, the premiere of Bizet's opera The Pearl Seekers took place, which, although it ran for eighteen performances, was not very successful. Another opera by Bizet, The Beauty of Perth, was written in 1867 and also did not receive public approval. Bizet himself was forced to agree with the opinion of critics and survive this moment of crisis in his musical career. However, it was in The Beauty of Perth that the first features of Bizet's realism appeared, who sought to change the style of comic opera, endowing it with deep life conflicts and feelings.
This was followed by a difficult year in 1868 in the biography of Georges Bizet, when, in addition to serious health problems, he experienced a long creative crisis. In 1869, Bizet married the daughter of his teacher, Genevieve Halévy, and in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Bizet enrolled in the National Guard, which could not but affect the young family and the creative work of the composer.
Biography of Georges Bizet - mature years.
The 70s were the heyday of the creative biography of Georges Bizet. In 1871, he again begins to study music and composes a suite for piano "Children's Games".
Soon Bizet composes a one-act romantic opera "Jamile", and in 1872 the premiere of Alphonse Daudet's play "The Arlesian" took place. The music written by Bizet for this play entered the golden fund of the world's symphonic works and became a new milestone in Bizet's creative biography. The premieres of these pieces were unsuccessful, despite the high merits of Bizet's music. Bizet himself considered the opera "Jamile" the beginning of his new path. "Jamile" became a confirmation of Bizet's creative maturity. It is believed that it was this work that led the composer to his operatic masterpiece Carmen.
Despite the fact that "Carmen" was written for staging at the Comic Opera, it can only be formally attributed to this genre, since "Carmen" is, in fact, a musical drama in which the composer managed to vividly draw folk scenes and characters.
The premiere of "Carmen" took place in 1875 and was unsuccessful, which was very hard for the composer and greatly affected his health. "Carmen" was appreciated after the death of Bizet and was recognized as the pinnacle of his work a year after the unsuccessful premiere. Pyotr Tchaikovsky called "Carmen a masterpiece, reflecting "to the strongest degree the musical aspirations of an entire era" and was convinced of the timeless popularity of the opera.
The uniqueness of Georges Bizet's work was expressed not only in the high merits of his music, but also in his deep understanding of theatrical music.
Georges Bizet died on June 3, 1875 from a heart attack.

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© Biography of Bizet Georges. Biography of the composer Georges Bizet. Biography of the musician Bizet

Bizet's versatile talent allowed him to start creating a grand opera, but the first compositions in which his creative abilities were revealed (not counting the early symphony) were pieces for the piano duo Children's Games, a one-act opera by Jamila and music for the drama by A. Daudet Arlesian.

Bizet, Georges (1838-1875), French composer. Alexander Cesar Leopold Bizet (at baptism received the name Georges) was born in Paris on October 25, 1838 in a musical family: his father and maternal uncle taught singing. At the age of nine he entered the Paris Conservatoire. He brilliantly studied piano with A.F. Marmontel and composition with P. Zimmerman, J.F.F. Halevi and C. Gounod; was awarded many awards. In 1857 he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome; by that time he had completed a symphony in C major, and Bizet's one-act operetta Le Docteur Miracle won first prize at a competition founded by J. Offenbach.

Bizet spent about three years in Rome, where the beauty of nature and the fine arts affected him more than Italian music. In the comic opera Don Procopio, written during this period, he imitates Donizetti in many ways; however, of his contemporary composers, Gounod had the greatest influence on him for a long time, and of his predecessors, Mozart and Rossini. An extremely gifted pianist, Bizet earned the recognition of Liszt himself, who listened to him play in May 1861 - a few months after Bizet returned from Rome to Paris.

As usual, Bizet immediately started composing an opera if he liked the libretto, but soon cooled off and left the work unfinished (one of his biographers counted about 20 such fruitless attempts). The composer's first completed and staged opera was The Pearl Seekers (Les Pecheurs de perles, 1863); despite the obvious influence of Gounod and J. Meyerbeer, the charm of lyricism and exotic oriental flavor ensured her a place of honor in the French operatic repertoire. Possessing an outstanding talent, Bizet barely made ends meet and was forced to earn extra money in music publishing houses. Day labor took up a lot of his time, undermined his health and distracted him from serious creativity. The next completed opera, The Beauty of Perth (La jolie fille de Perth), was written in 1866 and staged at the end of 1867. The weak libretto and the composer’s forced concessions to the prima donna undoubtedly affected the quality of the score, but still it contains a lot of wonderful material that Bizet later used in other compositions.

Bizet's versatile talent allowed him to start creating a grand opera, but the first compositions in which his creative abilities were revealed (not counting the early symphony) were pieces for the piano duet Children's games (Jeux d "enfants, 1871), a one-act opera by Jamile (Djamileh, 1872) and music for the drama by A. Dode Arlesian (L "Arlsienne, 1872). Bizet's marriage in 1869 to Geneviève Halévy, the daughter of his old teacher, streamlined his life and brought balance to feelings; in the trials that fell to his lot during the Franco-Prussian war (Bizet served in the National Guard) and in the days of the Paris Commune, his personality gained true depth.

In the Children's Games cycle, Bizet showed himself as a master of witty and lyrical miniatures; at Jamil he continued to refine his original orchestral writing, a gift for recreating local color and depicting poetic characters already evident in The Pearl Fishers. The music for the Arlesienne testifies to the composer's further creative growth: in several dances, intermezzos and melodramas, he managed to convey not only the atmosphere of Provence, but also the lyrical-tragic element of Dode's drama.

The excellent libretto chosen by Bizet for the next opera corresponded for the first time to the uniqueness of his talent: it was a staging of the novel by Prosper Merimee Carmen (Carmen), made by A. Melyac and L. Halevi. Bizet began work in 1872, but the premiere at the Paris Comic Opera took place only on March 3, 1875. An impressive success at the Vienna Opera (October 1875) made it possible to present the true value of the work. Bizet died June 3, 1875.

era of romanticism.

1. Biography. early years

4. During the Paris Commune

Opera Comic theater in Paris.

The events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune frightened him as a representative of the bourgeoisie, but they wiped him out of his aspirations for truthful, realistic art. Bizet was already married and moved in dangerous times to a quieter area of ​​Paris.

In the 70s - the period of Bizet's creative maturity - the opera Jamile (based on the poem "Namuna" by A. Musset, 1871), music for the drama "Arlesian" (1872) by A. Daudet were created. Having mastered the rhythm and intonation features of folk tunes, almost without resorting to quotations, Bizet authentically recreated the character of oriental and Provencal music in these works. These scores are distinguished by the mastery of the expressive means of the orchestra. 2 orchestral suites from the music to "Arlesienne" are very popular (1st created by the author, performed in 1872, 2nd - by the composer E. Giraud, performed in 1885).

5. The epic with the opera "Carmen"

The composer's desire to democratize operatic art, the desire to get rid of theatrical clichés and conventions were vividly expressed in the opera Carmen (based on the short story by P. Mérimée, 1874). The libretto of the opera was created by Ludovic Halévy, cousin of Georges Bizet's wife, whom he married for a year. Most of the music was written in two months in the suburbs of Paris - this is Bougival, where the family had a country house.

The main role was entrusted to the singer Galli-Marie. Celestine Galli-Marie was not satisfied with the habanera and the composer reworked it several times. Georges Bizet has never been to Spain, so he used Spanish dance music, its themes. He "borrowed" the theme of the habanera from the work of the Spanish composer Sebastian Herod, which was then a common practice. But he made a piece of music out of it, which has an independent value.

The opera was written by order of the management of the Opera Comic Theatre. A small theater then served the theatrical needs of respectable and narrow-minded bourgeois. In addition, the theater became a place for informal meetings of parents, who were looking for wealthy suitors for their daughters. Even their attitude to operas was regulated by bourgeois tastes. Heroes should be of noble birth, lead noble, suffer beautifully, they could only die for a significant purpose.

For the first time, representatives of the "lower classes" - a cigar factory worker and a mercenary soldier - performed on the French opera stage, truthfully revealing the experiences and passions of people of low, humble origin. The opera embodies the Spanish national musical flavor, the richness and variety of folk scenes, the tense course of dramatic events. At the premiere at the Opera Comedian (1875), "Carmen" was sharply negatively received by the bourgeois public, saw neither noble characters nor noble behavior between lovers. The rejection of the new opera and the indignation of the bourgeoisie was supported by the then bourgeois press. Newspapers printed articles calling the opera a "social dump". A wild gypsy and a soldier, whose behavior is on the verge of pathology, could not teach the nobility of respectable daughters from bourgeois families. In addition, still married, Carmen dies for the sake of freedom - her own feelings ...

6. Last years and death

8. The most important works

Operas and operettas

• La prtresse, operetta (1854)
• "Miracle Doctor" (Le docteur Miracle) opera buff (1857)
• "Don Procopio" (Don Procopio) opera buff (1859)
• "Pearl Seekers" (Les pcheurs de perles), opera (1863)
• "Ivan IV", grand opera (secondary)
• "Beauty of Perth" (La jolie fille de Perth) opera (1867)
• "Numa", opera (1871)
• "Arlesian" (L "Arlsienne),"music for the play" (1872)
• "Jamilya" (Djamileh) one-act opera (1872)
• "Carmen", opera (1875)

Symphonic music

• Symphony No. 1 in C-dur (1855)
• Symphony No. 2 "Roma" (destroyed by the author)
• Suite "Arlesian" (from Bizet's music for the play Arlesian, 1872)
• Suite from the opera "Carmen"

Other

• choirs with orchestra and a cappella;
• pieces for piano,
• piano duets;
• romances, songs;

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