GEORGES (183S-75). A French operatic composer. He was the son of a singing-master in Paris, and was generally regarded as a child prodigy. At nine he entered the Conservatoire, where his masters were Marmontel in piano, Zimmermann in harmony, Benoist in organ, and his future father-in-law, Dalevy, in composition. For a decade he carried off nearly all the Conservatoire prizes, and in 1557 his comic opera, Le doeteur miracle, was awarded the palm over sixty other compositions in a competition established by Offenbach, Several months later he won the Prix de Home, and the dream of his life was realized. He plunged into the study of the great Italian Masters of Church music, at the same time broadening and deepening his mental and artistic equipment by voracious reading and con stant visits to the museums and galleries in Rome. Ills letters of this period mirror faith fully the striking growth of the artist. and. more unusual still, the modest eonsciousness of this growth. While in Italy he composed the opera Don Proropio, discovered in 1893 among the papers of Auger: two movements of a symphony, and a comic opera, La guzla de l'Emir. Ile re turned to Paris a finished composer. yet his opera Les iVeheurs de perles, a tale of Hindu love, was produced at the Thatre Lyrique 1180) with no particular success. La folic de Perth, based on Scott's novel, was more favorably received by the critics. Bizet now fie eepted Wa;,,mer's contentions for dramatic verity in opera without accepting his methods of at taining it. These were the years of exoticism in music, which was inaugurated by Fidieien David (q.v.), and at which Bizet had already tried hand. Djamileh (1S72), a one-act trag edy of unrequited love in the Orient, was brushed away by the public as too Wagnerian and IT/1 theatrical, but the author was "absolutely sure that he had found his way; lie knew what he doing." Technical mastery, Gallic deftness and delicacy of touch. emotional depth and sin cerity, were all concentrated in this tale of sup pressed passion amid the languorous surround ings of a Cairo harem. Unlike David, with whom Orientalism was the aim and essence of the composition, Bizet employed it only as a back ground, an atmosphere for universal and eternal emotions. This little masterpiece was followed in the same year by the incidental music to Daudet's drama L'Arh'sienne. The spirit of
'fair Provence' was transmuted into tones with wonderful power. The public paid no attention to the cntr'-uete music, performed amid the chat tering usual between the acts, and yet at present the music and the drama have grown to be con sidered as inseparable as is Mendelssohn's music from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Drea in, or Beethoven's music from Goethe's Egmont. The discouraged composer tempted fortune for the last time with Carmen (1875), based on Merimee's novel. Another failure. and in a few months the master died at Bougival (of consumption, probably). carrying to his grave the conviction that he had created a chef-d'ieuvre—an opinion in which musicians of all schools and tastes concur at, present, when Carmen is one of the half-dozen most popular operas of the lyric stage. "Dramatic and picturesque," Carmen delineates in masterly style the psychology of the wayward heroine from the whimsical co quetry of the first scene to the fatalistic bravado of the tragic denouement. The develop ment of the choler in the weakling Don Jose, driven by Carmen's heartlessness to despair and murder; the purity and devotion of the lachry mose Micaela : the pleasure-loving bull-fighter all these once seen and heard are never forgot ten. Even to the minor personages, each speaks an individual musical language.
Besides two overtures, Bizet wrote piano music and a number of songs. highly valued by con noisseurs.
Bizet was a remarkable reader of orchestral scores at sight, an erudite musician. a man of wide culture and strong artistic convictions. With all his admiration for the mnsic•drama, he (lid not overburden his Carmen with colossal orchestration, nor did lie discard the time honored set numbers and ensembles or make use of the /eit•motif. except 'reminiscentially$ The choice, too, of subjects for his last two works was in the direction of every-day realism. contrary to the theory that myth is the only subject for a music•drama. France undoubtedly lost in Bizet one of her greatest musicians be fore he had achieved what was easily within his power to achieve. Consult C. 13ellaigne, "Georges Bizet." Revue des Deux Mondes (October 15, 1889).